Cleaning a Penny - READ POST BEFORE COMMENTING

Griffin1217

Hi,

I have a 1900 Indian head and I was wondering if I should clean it. It's pretty gunky. Now, I know most of you are getting ready to pound your keyboards, "DON'T EVER CLEAN COINS!!" but I have no concern with its value. I just want to know if there are any disadvantages to cleaning it as long as I do it in the least-destructive way possible? Thanks.

Griffin

MsMorrisine

You destroy something when destroying gunk.

You think you can stop at gunk and 100% not the coin?

Organic gunk can safely be removed with acetone

Type2

Haha I keep looking at this one but I just can’t.

airplanenut

Even if it’s worth little now and you don’t care about it being worth yet less, you’ll turn a coin that may at least have some decent color and appeal into a bright, unattractive coin. Unless you know exactly what you’re doing and have a very limited situation where some level of proper cleaning can help, the only thing you can do to the coin is make it worse. Unless it’s so bad that it can no longer be made worse.

291fifth

Show photos and describe what you think the "gunk" is.

MsMorrisine

Find a gunky Lincoln cent to abuse

LanceNewmanOCC

@airplanenut said:
Even if it’s worth little now and you don’t care about it being worth yet less, you’ll turn a coin that may at least have some decent color and appeal into a bright, unattractive coin. Unless you know exactly what you’re doing and have a very limited situation where some level of proper cleaning can help, the only thing you can do to the coin is make it worse. Unless it’s so bad that it can no longer be made worse.

THIS

LanceNewmanOCC

@Type2 said:
Haha I keep looking at this one but I just can’t.

nice pics. despite the buff being so dark and almost making it appear if it were bad images, i can tell that if that wasn't a severely corroded buff but a nice one instead, you would have some lovely images there. nj keeping the glare down while not sacrificing the brightness. NOT an easy task to accomplish but once learned, is priceless.

after practicing with some truly no-value buffs or libs even, coins like this can have some life brought back and with the date and the meat left, is surely worth doing so IF the practice is in place. there is a BIG market for inexpensive better date buffs/libs, especially libs.

Oldhoopster

• what is the composition of the gunk?
• Is it a stain or environmental damage?
• What's under the gunk? Corrosion?
• has it reacted with the surface metal or just adhered?
• Which chemical or solvent will dissolve/strip the gunk?
• Will that chemical react with the coin surface?
• How will you neutralize the chemicals when complete?
• Will you use the chemicals at full strength or diluted?

If you want to do a good job of cleaning coins without turning them into garbage, these are SOME of the questions you need to consider.

ricko

You could submit it for professional restoration.... Expensive, but they do good work. Cheers, RickO