Oh the horrors of my childhood.

relicsncoins

I remember when I was around 8 or 9 in the late 70's I had a neighbor that was probably 75 at the time. She knew I had folder with some Indian head cents in it. She had a pile of silver coins from the early 1900ds through the 1960's. About once a month or so, she would invite me over to sit around and use silver polish to shine those coins up all bright and shiny. Thinking back, I wonder how many nicer Barbers, Mercs, SLQ's and Walkers we ruined. I didn't know enough as a kid, and she was of the mindset that her silver coins should look like her silverware.

WingedLiberty1957

i remember some coin dealers back in the 1960's selling silver polish paste.

markelman1125

Believe it or not when I was starting out collecting I would polish my coins. I remember I was gifted a standing liberty quarter. The first thing I did was polish it because it was dirty. Looks back I feel disappointed in myself but at the same time I did not know much about coins because I was a young kid

Namvet69

I wasn't a polisher but I didn't protect or isolate my coins. I used a glass coin piggy bank, glass liberty bell, an old sock. In and out all the time. Peace Roy

ricko

I recall that as a youngster, I used a pencil eraser on some cents, to make them look new. Never polished silver coins. Cheers, RickO

TurtleCat

@ricko said:
I recall that as a youngster, I used a pencil eraser on some cents, to make them look new. Never polished silver coins. Cheers, RickO

I did the same thing, though it was mostly common 1970s cents for me. I also did the eraser trick on some cheap foreign coins. Seemed like a marvel to me, lol.

PerryHall

One of the best features of sonically sealed slabs is that it protects the coin from those who would otherwise try to "improve" the coin. Of course, the owner can always destroy the slab in order to get to the coin to "improve" the coin.

Treashunt

@ricko said:
I recall that as a youngster, I used a pencil eraser on some cents, to make them look new. Never polished silver coins. Cheers, RickO

Sorry to say, I did the same.

[hangs head in shame]

sellitstore

Probably no harm done as these likely were worn circulation finds, not higher grade collector specimens.

astrorat

@ricko said:
I recall that as a youngster, I used a pencil eraser on some cents, to make them look new. Never polished silver coins. Cheers, RickO

When I was single digits, I remember using pencil erasers on Jefferson nickels.

GotTheBug

Revere Copper Cleaner worked "wonders" on the Lincoln cents in my blue Whitman folder. Fortunately, none of the coins were key dates, nor were they original gems.

CoinHoarder

When I was a kid, I took a worn 1916 Merc Dime and cleaned it really good with baking soda and water. I still have that dime, and it still looks as shiny as a polished hub cap.

USSID17

@ricko said:
I recall that as a youngster, I used a pencil eraser on some cents, to make them look new. Never polished silver coins. Cheers, RickO

Looks like a few of us did the same thing as kids. Seemed like the right thing to do at the time.!

PerryHall

Anyone else take mercury from a thermometer and coat a penny to make it a silver color?

USSID17

@relicsncoins said:
I remember when I was around 8 or 9 in the late 70's I had a neighbor that was probably 75 at the time. She knew I had folder with some Indian head cents in it. She had a pile of silver coins from the early 1900ds through the 1960's. About once a month or so, she would invite me over to sit around and use silver polish to shine those coins up all bright and shiny. Thinking back, I wonder how many nicer Barbers, Mercs, SLQ's and Walkers we ruined. I didn't know enough as a kid, and she was of the mindset that her silver coins should look like her silverware.

Don't feel bad. As a kid I scotch taped my coins into the folder to keep them from falling out. The tape long since dried up and fell off but you can see the aftermath!! Like I said; It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

I left the original coins and folder intact, "after" I acetoned the glue residue off!

Coinscratch

When I was a YN (about 4 years ago) I polished up some dirty old war nickels with Brasso. It works really well, they're very clean and kinda blue.

SanctionII

Anyone In their youth take a cent, place it on a railroad track and retrieve it after a train ran over it?

This was a way of creating your own large cent and increasing the size of the money supply.

PerryHall

@SanctionII said:
Anyone In their youth take a cent, place it on a railroad track and retrieve it after a train ran over it?

This was a way of creating your own large cent and increasing the size of the money supply.

I've done this but most of the time the coins were hard to find after the train passed. This was popular thing to do when the funeral train for a famous person such as an assassinated president passed through a town to create a souvenir of the event.

amwldcoin

Off topic but relevant! When I was a stamp collector I got so tired of my stamps falling out of my album because those crappy stamp hinges never held up to many times flipping through my album. So what did I do? Dang, I can make better stamp hinges out of scotch tape!

Fast forward a couple years and I realized the err in my ways. Nope, can't pull the tape off without tearing the stamp. Did some experimenting and after days off work and several cans of lighter fluid my worthless stamp collection was transformed into being acceptable again by my peers!

WAYNEAS

I wish that I had half of the cents that I placed on the tracks. The things we do when we are kids. lol
Wayne

tommy44

@PerryHall said:
Anyone else take mercury from a thermometer and coat a penny to make it a silver color?

When I was a kid you could buy mercury from the pharmacist at the drug store, (along with potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulphur BOOM!). I remember rolling the mercury around in the palm of my hand and coating all sorts of coins with it. This was probably in the very late 50s or early 60s.

PerryHall

@tommy44 said:

@PerryHall said:
Anyone else take mercury from a thermometer and coat a penny to make it a silver color?

When I was a kid you could buy mercury from the pharmacist at the drug store, (along with potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulphur BOOM!). I remember rolling the mercury around in the palm of my hand and coating all sorts of coins with it. This was probably in the very late 50s or early 60s.

It's a wonder we weren't poisoned.

WAYNEAS

Ouch.
Wayne

johnny9434

@PerryHall said:
Anyone else take mercury from a thermometer and coat a penny to make it a silver color?

no but have seen it done

Hydrant

@PerryHall said:
Anyone else take mercury from a thermometer and coat a penny to make it a silver color?

Yes. Dimes too. The kids at school would do it. Can you imagine the uproar today if kids brought mercury to school? DANGER...DANGER!....call the HAZMAT SQUAD!

AND........Remember playing mumbly peg in the schoolyard? Now?......Call the SWAT TEAM!

ColonelJessup

@Treashunt said:

@ricko said:
I recall that as a youngster, I used a pencil eraser on some cents, to make them look new. Never polished silver coins. Cheers, RickO

Sorry to say, I did the same.

[hangs head in shame]

Mercury makes the coin real shiny, and then......

PerryHall

In the old days people would take and use a bench grinder to grind a cent down to the size of a dime for use in vending machines and pay phones. This was a popular activity in prison work shops and high school shop classes. Vending machines back then were not as sophisticated as they are now. A vending machine coke used to cost a nickel until the late1950's and a phone call was a dime.

Barberian

@ricko said:
I recall that as a youngster, I used a pencil eraser on some cents, to make them look new. Never polished silver coins. >Cheers, RickO

I did that as well as polished a few coins by rubbing them hard on a rug. Almost always with coins without any significant value, though. The one exception was an 1876-S dime in AU that I spotted in a lake along the shoreline that was badly stained. I rubbed it on a rug to try to remove the stain, though it still doesn't look all that bad.

My aunt had a gorgeously toned capped bust quarter from the 1820's in midgrade that she had kicking around in a jewelry box. She decided to sell it to the new coin dealer in her town, so she got out the silver cleaner and a scrub pad and totally ruined a coin easily worth over $500. The dealer wouldn't buy it. I've held that against her for years.

A friend asked me to look at a coin collection he inherited a few years ago. Most of the collection were nicely toned common date AU Morgans and common average-circulated Barber quarters. However, they also had an EF Seated Liberty dollar (don't recall the date) that the right field had been scrubbed with a pencil eraser. I told them that what was once a $600 coin had had its market value cut at least in half. Fortunately, they weren't concerned as they just wanted to know what they had.

lkenefic

Wow!! Take me back!! I started collecting in the late 1960's when I was 8 years old... I'm guilty of silver polish and cream of tartar on silver coins... Brasso and a pencil eraser on copper... Cellophane taping Morgan Dollars because they'd fall out of the Whitman folder I had them in... eeeek! My sincere apologies to Numismatics!

edited to ad: mea culpa!

trueblood

@astrorat said:

@ricko said:
I recall that as a youngster, I used a pencil eraser on some cents, to make them look new. Never polished silver coins. Cheers, RickO

When I was single digits, I remember using pencil erasers on Jefferson nickels.

and I on my Lincolns