New Love Token... and does anyone have any tricks for unpolishing coins ?
jayPem
Posts: 4,081 âœâœâœâœâœ
I'm not complaining, I assumed heavy polish before I bid, but wow! This thing shines! 😄
Seeing as how its already holed, planed smooth and obviously tooled, does any one have any methods for toning something polished to mirror smooth?
Bury it in the back yard? Put it in coffee grounds?
Send it in and try for a DMPL?
Neat engraving.. cool enough for sure, but here's the clincher 👇...Been after this over date and to find it on an LT is very awesome!
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You can try putting it in a kraft paper coin envelope and put it in a warm place in your house. It's a slow process but at least the results will be natural toning. I've read that wrapping in in a brown Taco Bell napkin will also work.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
Thats nice ! Congrats !
Do you have a time machine?
Add some hardboiled egg in a sandwich bag but try not to let the egg touch the surfaces. Set in a sunny widow sill for a week and watch until you get the look you want.
Thats cool!
Polished silver tarnishes
good point... I'm no fan of AT but really don't like polished looking coins either.
Luckily there's not much of an issue here, this is now a piece of exonumia and pristine surfaces are not always included in the deal..
I have a feeling that this maybe happened very recently though. 😢
Get 10 or 12-well-worn but uncleaned wheat cents that won't have any jagged edges that might scratch something, and carry them and this coin together as pocket pieces for a while, until you like the way it looks.
I'm going to try this 👆
Good luck. Let us see it again when you are done.
And don’t spend it!!!!!
:-)
I saw a video online somewhere where a guy used hard boiled egg yolks to tone ASE's quickly. I bet you could search it easily.
The problem with the whole egg thing is that I don't want it looking like an Easter egg either.. pocket full of copper should at least get it back to something that looks like it has natural wear.
Actually, I have a bunch of worn, counterstamped large cents that I could use..period correct.
I would try it with a less expensive coin first.
The other suggestions are definitely ones I would try with throw aways, but basically putting it back into "controlled circulation" is probably the one thing that could actually help and not do any real harm 🙂
Steps have already been taken to make this a less expensive coin...
1. many decades of use in commerce
2. someone drilled a hole in it
3. Presumably that same someone planed of the reverse and and carved a message in it
4. Probably recently someone polished the snot out of it.. this alone probably snuffed 2/3rd of its value..
Probably relatively modern. My late first wife was named Jean, and it took me many, many years to find a love token with her name on it. It just wasn’t common during the golden age of love tokens.
I was referring to the polishing.. do you suspect the engraving could be recent?
Perhaps 1977..? 😯
A few pocket piece companions..
I'll try and remember to return to this thread in a couple years if this works..
Oh, of course.
Use small cents. You’ll get better metal on metal contact.
It will be interesting to see the results of your project. Please be sure to give us periodic updates. Cheers, RickO
Hmm...reading between the lines, I have an interesting theory about one potential provenance of this love token.
😅
From my experience, carrying a coin with pocket change will dull the effects of any polishing but it will give it a burnished appearance. Natural toning comes from storage in a sulfur rich environment.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
I don't know. I've seen some real harm done from "simulated circulation". But, good luck, we look forward to the results.
Picture worth a 1000 words. I used a sqarshed up hard boiled egg. Put in Tupperware elevated coin with paper clip and back to frig. The donor ase had terrible spotting problems. (I’m not the video guy😂) That’s one ugly ase ,eh?
🎶 shout shout, let it all out 🎶
This is what I would do
Steve
Do tell.
Alright, I'll take a crack at it...😄
Wild idea, pure speculation but let's say a knowledgeable, connected coin person came across a cool type coin, an overdate no less that was very uncommon, or maybe, never seen before as a love token host. This coin maybe had some serious problems already... (heavily polished and a huge gouge on the reverse...) and was available very cheap.
Lets imagine this person had also been looking a very long time for a token to give his significant other.
The hitch? She has a name that was as rare in the 19th century as this particular coin was as an LT host..
Having just arranged to have some engraving done on a gold plated Timex, a Christmas present ( Dec. 1977) for his brother in law, a most clever idea struck the coin person...
A second work order was delivered to the engraver, and one very unusual and extremely bright Christmas present was delivered just in time for the annual Sheboygan Coin Club Christmas Eve Gala.
I'm right, aren't I?
If I had ever had a love token made for my Jean, I would have certainly found an interesting coin to do it on!