"Restoring" coins

alpha33

Guess I've been gone longer than I thought. When did it become acceptable to "restore" a coin? It seems to me that not long ago it was taboo to restore, clean or otherwise alter a coins appearance. Short of running it under water to rinse off the dirt.
Thoughts? alpha33 out....................................

coinbuf

Not sure when you left but dealers (and collectors) have been "improving" coins for far longer than I've been alive. Getting rid of tarnish, verdigris, and contaminates like PVC are all good reasons for restoration imo.

ChrisH821

If done properly it's just fine. No abrasives and no surface alteration.
One should know what they are doing, and be willing to accept what they might find under whatever is being removed.

coinbuf

Your mixing your terms an improved coin is not automatically a cleaned coin. Cleaned coins that have been scrubbed, hairlined, or recolored are still frowned upon mostly and top level TPG's will still note these if they catch them. Coins that have been conserved properly have been acceptable since before TPG's were created.

ctf_error_coins

Cleaning and restoring and two completely different things.

I have restored many coins.

I have never cleaned a coin.

PVC sucks, Grease deposits suck. Both can be removed without "cleaning" a coin.

AMRC

I think what is different now, is that it is talked about more.

MsMorrisine

One point to make

If verdigris is removed from a coin, there is likely pitting left behind

The pitting will get it in a details grade holder instead of a straight grade

johnny9434

I'm not a big fan of cleaning coins jmo

moursund

@AMRC said:
I think what is different now, is that it is talked about more.

But apparently threads will be closed if the moderator thinks the discussion is about 'doctoring'.

AMRC

There is doctoring and conserving. Everyone should hate doctoring, and be happy about conservation. Art, and other collectibles are routinely conserved to bring them to their highest state. Doctoring is more like forging Art. :-)

charlesf20

So I can safely through away my Brillo pad?

MsMorrisine

At this time your Brillo pad is only welcome for making Etsy error coins

JBK

Maybe better words than "cleaning" for what is acceptable would be "decontaminating" or "neutralizing" or "stabilizing" the coin.

PerryHall

@JBK said:
Maybe better words than "cleaning" for what is acceptable would be "decontaminating" or "neutralizing" or "stabilizing" the coin.

"Coin conservation" is the term that most collectors use.

Jzyskowski1

Maybe the ship wreck coin folks and the metal detector folks should weigh in . 😉

TurtleCat

The word “cleaning” is simply used too broadly by some. It really boils down to a simple thing, IMO: is the coin impaired in the process or not. Many cleaning processes do not move metal or only a very minuscule amount. Others alter the coin in more dramatic ways that are more damaging.

Cleaning that doesn’t move metal is fine but we often find that people don’t properly do it and residue or undesired effects occur layer.

DCW

There are certain coins that are such dogs, restoration can only help.
Wouldn't you rather look at something that was free of verdigris, spots, environmental damage? Or would you prefer to stay original with the issues preventing it from straight grading anyway?

ricko

Restoration can be performed without altering the surface of the coin. The 'science' has grown considerably to the point that TPG's offer such services for a fee. Cheers, RickO

jmlanzaf

@coinbuf said:
Not sure when you left but dealers (and collectors) have been "improving" coins for far longer than I've been alive. Getting rid of tarnish, verdigris, and contaminates like PVC are all good reasons for restoration imo.

This is especially true of ancient coins that have been "curated" (restored) for as long as they've been digging them out of the dirt.

jmlanzaf

@alpha33 said:
Guess I've been gone longer than I thought. When did it become acceptable to "restore" a coin? It seems to me that not long ago it was taboo to restore, clean or otherwise alter a coins appearance. Short of running it under water to rinse off the dirt.
Thoughts? alpha33 out....................................

There has never been a time when it was not acceptable to restore a coin. The "taboo" was advice given to newbies to prevent them from ruining coins with sloppy "restoration".

privatecoin

Artificially white....

Jzyskowski1

@Jzyskowski1 said:
Maybe the ship wreck coin folks and the metal detector folks should weigh in . 😉

@ricko said:
Restoration can be performed without altering the surface of the coin. The 'science' has grown considerably to the point that TPG's offer such services for a fee. Cheers, RickO

@jmlanzaf said:

@coinbuf said:
Not sure when you left but dealers (and collectors) have been "improving" coins for far longer than I've been alive. Getting rid of tarnish, verdigris, and contaminates like PVC are all good reasons for restoration imo.

This is especially true of ancient coins that have been "curated" (restored) for as long as they've been digging them out of the dirt.

I have several coins that with out conservation would not be recognized as a coin. All the ancient s. Thousands of years old. Ship wreck coins just wouldn’t be part of history. It’s a great question and many thoughtful positions.

HoldTheMayo

From the dealers I’ve talked to, coin cleaning was not taboo 40 or 50 years ago. People didn’t care they just wanted blast white coins

Oldhoopster

@HoldTheMayo said:
From the dealers I’ve talked to, coin cleaning was not taboo 40 or 50 years ago. People didn’t care they just wanted blast white coins

It was absolutely taboo in the late 70s when I was really getting into coins as a teenager. A mentor at the local coin club taught me how to recognize hair lines and dipped coins with impaired luster (along with wizzed coins). Granted, the knowledge wasn't as sophisticated as it is today, but neither was the chemistry techniques.

Blast white was the preference well into the 90s (anybody remember Dr. Weimer White writing that all toning = damage), but many collectors were aware of the disadvantages of cleaned coins and discounted them accordingly.

1Mike1

I think with some coins, if they are not "restored" we could lose them forever. At one point or another we have to accept restoration. It's disappointing after restoration that some of the coins are passed on as original.

YoloBagels

There is a massive difference between improper cleaning and proper cleaning (restoration).

"Don't clean your coins" is a blanket quote made to scare new collectors into not messing with coins; at least until they understand what they are doing restoration-wise.

Sapyx

There has always been two levels of messaging.

To new collectors and to those outside the hobby completely, the message must be simple: "Don't clean coins" is simple.

To "advanced" collectors, they should be aware that there are a whole basket of exceptions to this rule, and always has been. Explaining these exceptions to newcomers would just cause confusion and dilute the message. These exceptions include:

• Coins dug up from the ground. This includes pretty much every single ancient and mediaeval coin. These coins need cleaning, even if just to bring them to the point of being able to be identified. Bronze coins that have been underground for over a thousand years look like little green rocks in their "raw" state, and need careful cleaning to make them look anything like a coin again, a process not entirely dissimilar to the process of extracting a fossil from rock. This cleaning can look "harsh" by modern standards, involving processes such as long soaks in distilled water, short soaks in dilute acid, electrolysis, and scraping at the surface with diamond-encrusted dental tools.
• Coins with active, "contagious" corrosion, like bronze disease, zinc rot, or tin pest. Only the baser metals suffer from this, but an afflicted coin will continue to get worse and worse if left untreated, until there's nothing left of the surface but a powdery, crumbly mess. Despite the biological-sounding name, these conditions are caused by chemistry, not biology, and the cure is found in chemistry, as well; chelating agents like EDTA are best for removing the corrosion but keeping the oxides and uncorroded metal mostly intact.
• Coins damaged by PVC or similar plastics. These leave "green goo" on the coin as the plastic degrades, and this goo is acidic; if it is not removed, the damage will continue to occur. The coin has likely already been damaged - "green goo" is green because it's already sucked some copper and/or nickel out of the metal surface.
• Coins covered in other forms of "organic goo", such as paint, glue, varnish or stickytape residue. This is considered "foreign matter" and is chemically distinct from the metal and metal oxides on the coin's surface. It can be removed with organic solvent such as acetone, xylene or the now-banned CFCs. Washing a coin in such solvents is chemically identical to washing a coin in distilled water; no reaction between the metal and the solvent takes place, so it is considered "acceptable cleaning".
• War medals. Nobody can stop old soldiers from polishing up their medals, and it's considered rude to even try. So it's perfectly fine to use "harsh" cleaning like silver or brass polish on war medals.

Note many of these "treatments" will result in a "cleaned coin". It's just a matter of preferring a "cleaned coin" to a "damaged coin".