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What's the worst thing you've done to a coin?

bennybravobennybravo Posts: 1,909 ✭✭✭

When I was about 6 or 7, may dad would take me and my brother to the local coin shop, and he and I would have 2 or 3 bucks to snatch up those cool 1800's indian head pennies for 35 or 55 cents each. We quickly figured out at that age, that a pencil eraser magically gave this bright, clean copper appearance to our treasures, most assuredly increasing the value 10 fold. Acid date nickels? Jeweluster? Artificial toning experiments? Fess up. We're all friends here.

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Comments

  • bennybravobennybravo Posts: 1,909 ✭✭✭

    @P0CKETCHANGE said:
    Stuck it up my nose.

    Thank you POCKETCHANGE. The compulsion to stick coins up your nose must be very difficult for you. Thanks for sharing.

  • BillJonesBillJones Posts: 33,944 ✭✭✭✭✭

    First, lost it.

    Second, cleaned it when I was kid.

    Retired dealer and avid collector of U.S. type coins, 19th century presidential campaign medalets and selected medals. In recent years I have been working on a set of British coins - at least one coin from each king or queen who issued pieces that are collectible. I am also collecting at least one coin for each Roman emperor from Julius Caesar to ... ?
  • bennybravobennybravo Posts: 1,909 ✭✭✭

    @PerryHall said:
    Anyone else coat a cent with mercury? :D

    I have never heard this, please explain!

  • PerryHallPerryHall Posts: 46,085 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @bennybravo said:

    @PerryHall said:
    Anyone else coat a cent with mercury? :D

    I have never heard this, please explain!

    Break a glass mercury thermometer and then rub some of the mercury over the coin with your thumb. It makes a cent look like it's silver.

    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

  • bennybravobennybravo Posts: 1,909 ✭✭✭

    @goodmoney4badmoney said:
    Over 15 years ago I drilled a hole in what used to be a BU cent and put it on my key ring.

    This is an awesome display of a good luck charm. Kudos.

  • johnny9434johnny9434 Posts: 28,276 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @P0CKETCHANGE said:
    Stuck it up my nose.

    B)

  • rte592rte592 Posts: 1,656 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited May 1, 2024 9:31AM

    I donated some copper cents to the chrome plating guy for testing his vats once, OK maybe Twice.
    Funny never got those back, hmmm.
    Seen a few denominations set on train tracks and recovered a couple.
    I have a dime someplace that was shot at from a 100 yards, that was worth a $100 bet :o Well I won $99.90 :D

    I used some Mexican coinage to plug/weld some dashboard holes in a 1969 VW karmann ghia...have you priced out what washers cost these days :D

  • sellitstoresellitstore Posts: 2,862 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited May 1, 2024 9:29AM

    Ahhh...Childhood memories.

    First one that came to mind was the eraser cleaning experiments, too. But then I remembered the vice torture days, making tiny copper ingots and half cents.

    Collector and dealer in obsolete currency. Always buying all obsolete bank notes and scrip.
  • AllentramAllentram Posts: 100 ✭✭✭

    Ohh, just thought of another. When I was about 15 months old I swallowed a cent. Eventually it passed through my system and my mom pulled it out from my diaper. My mom still had it as of a few years ago, a 1970-D. I know, TMI.

  • BryceMBryceM Posts: 11,793 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I've dissolved several zinc cents in acid, leaving a thin, copper shell. Put a few on the railroad tracks. Put even more through "souvenir cent" mashers. I've melted a few silver coins. Hit a few Peace dollars with a sledgehammer.

    The worst thing I ever did with a coin though was pay more than face value to acquire it. ;)

  • TheGoonies1985TheGoonies1985 Posts: 5,435 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Cleaned some coins with baking soda....live and learn as they say.

  • AUandAGAUandAG Posts: 24,754 ✭✭✭✭✭

    i've lost 3 Morgans on flights (pocket coins) and all were CC's.....:(

    bob

    Registry: CC lowballs (boblindstrom), bobinvegas1989@yahoo.com
  • jmlanzafjmlanzaf Posts: 33,927 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Completely dissolved them in acid

  • ajaanajaan Posts: 17,356 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Railroad tracks.


    DPOTD-3
    'Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery'

    CU #3245 B.N.A. #428


    Don
  • jfriedm56jfriedm56 Posts: 1,196 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Back in the 60’s when I was about 10, my grandmother gave me a choice uncirculated 1881-P Morgan. I wanted a pure white coin, so I polished the electric blue and purple toning off and had a shiny white dollar. Boy did I ruin that coin. Everything is a learning experience and I still have that coin to this day as a reminder of what not to do.

  • CryptoCrypto Posts: 3,673 ✭✭✭✭✭

    My first gold coin that I bought was a 1881/0 5$ EF45 that I took out and put back into cardboard flips soooooo many times to look at it under a glass as a 13 year old that I eventually staple scratched it horribly on the rev. I proceeded to lose it in a drawer for 3 years until one day I realized all was not lost, it was still gold and I needed beer money.

  • lkeneficlkenefic Posts: 8,160 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I did the baking soda treatment to a few circulated Morgan Dollars as a kid. I remember the eraser on Lincoln cents too. I think the worst was train tracks...

    Collecting: Dansco 7070; Middle Date Large Cents (VF-AU); Box of 20;

    Successful BST transactions with: SilverEagles92; Ahrensdad; Smitty; GregHansen; Lablade; Mercury10c; copperflopper; whatsup; KISHU1; scrapman1077, crispy, canadanz, smallchange, robkool, Mission16, ranshdow, ibzman350, Fallguy, Collectorcoins, SurfinxHI, jwitten, Walkerguy21D, dsessom.
  • GRANDAMGRANDAM Posts: 8,499 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I use to place pennies on the railroad tracks and let them get flattened.

    GrandAm :)
  • DrBusterDrBuster Posts: 5,377 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited May 2, 2024 5:00AM

    Digestion. Used to throw coins into the pool and dive to get them when I first started swimming. Put one in my mouth and choked/swallowed it....got it back after the process, ha

  • MsMorrisineMsMorrisine Posts: 32,985 ✭✭✭✭✭

    mercury? check.

    i have a oled and plugged junk morgan that it tried some at on. at one point i heard about cloroxing and did that. believe everyone who says that new silver-chloro-something stuff just doesn't come off. but that isn't a big deal. after the clorox, i heated it up and applied hydrogen peroxide. it turned it purple and that new compound just doesn't come off either.

    Current maintainer of Stone's Master List of Favorite Websites // My BST transactions
  • CoinscratchCoinscratch Posts: 8,637 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I swallowed a quarter once playing the beer drinking game Quarters. That was my first night out in my new car at 16.
    Got into a fight that night with one of my dear friends, luckily lost my keys and got arrested for disorderly conduct and public intoxication.
    I’m pretty sure it was clad 😂

  • Married2CoinsMarried2Coins Posts: 483 ✭✭✭

    Tried to tone it in the oven while placed in the middle of a a circle of sulfur powder.

  • rec78rec78 Posts: 5,732 ✭✭✭✭✭

    When I was in grade school in 4th or 5th grade about 1963 or 1964 a kid on my bus offered me 50 cents for a penny cut in half, so I sawed a penny - (copper back then) in half and I asked him for my 50 cents he said it was not exactly cut in half because one of the halfs was bigger then the other, so I did not get the 50 cents. I would up holding it together and using it in a gumball machine to purchase a piece of gum. I always wondered what the owner of the gumball machine thought when he got that one!

    image
  • BLUEJAYWAYBLUEJAYWAY Posts: 8,956 ✭✭✭✭✭

    When too young, undersold a coin once.

    Successful transactions:Tookybandit. "Everyone is equal, some are more equal than others".
  • SanctionIISanctionII Posts: 12,091 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited May 2, 2024 1:51AM

    Threw coins off of the Royal Gorge Bridge in Canon City, Colorado when I was a kid. The coins fell over 1,000 feet into the Arkansas River below.

    Railroad tracks and train flatten coins. I did that.

    Swallowed a nickel and recovered it the next day or two.

    Hit coins with a hammer, squeezed them and bent them in a vice, cleaned them with baking soda and water.

  • Cranium_Basher73Cranium_Basher73 Posts: 3,187 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Froze a post 82 zinc cent with liquid nitrogen and hit it with a hammer. It shattered.

    Throw a coin enough times, and suppose one day it lands on its edge.

  • ZoinsZoins Posts: 34,113 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Dropped accidentally creating a rim ding.

  • ZoinsZoins Posts: 34,113 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited May 1, 2024 10:55PM

    @Cranium_Basher73 said:
    Froze a post 82 zinc cent with liquid nitrogen and hit it with a hammer. It shattered.

    Very interesting. Did you make a video of it?

  • PerryHallPerryHall Posts: 46,085 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Sapyx said:
    I snapped a 2500 year old ancient coin in half.

    Silver has an interesting property, almost unique to silver: as it ages, it "crystallizes", making it more brittle. So a piece of silver that would have smoothly flowed or bent or bounced when it was freshly minted would, after a thousand years or more, simply snap or shatter if similarly treated. Metal detectorists know this phenomenon well, as they often find bent and twisted silver mediaeval coins which cannot be easily flattened out again simply by attempting to un-bend them, since the coins simply snap in half if they try.

    I have (had? well, that's debatable but I kind of still have it) a tiny silver fractional coin from the city of Selinus, in what we now call Sicily, Italy. I keep it in a rigid 2x2-sized flip, as I do with all my ancient coins, because I want to occasionally get them out and examine them, or simply show them off at a coin club meeting, or on a coin forum.

    I'd taken this specific coin out of its flip to take its picture for my coin club's newsletter (which I am the Editor of). I put it back in it's flip, and must have bent or forced it more than usual somehow - because a large piece of it simply snapped off. Not clean "in half", as the sensationalist headline announced, but probably a good quarter of it. So I now have two pieces of a silver coin, sitting in that coin flip.

    Is it possible to conserve a bent ancient silver coin by heating it to just below the melting point and then to gently flatten it between two pieces of soft pine or similar material?
    Many years ago, someone in my coin club brought an ancient silver signate ring for show and tell. He found it while metal detecting while he was stationed in Europe. When he displayed it, he included a sign that said "DO NOT TOUCH!" Someone picked it up to try it on and then dropped on the hard tile floor and it shattered.

    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

  • ernie11ernie11 Posts: 1,940 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @bennybravo said:
    When I was about 6 or 7, may dad would take me and my brother to the local coin shop, and he and I would have 2 or 3 bucks to snatch up those cool 1800's indian head pennies for 35 or 55 cents each. We quickly figured out at that age, that a pencil eraser magically gave this bright, clean copper appearance to our treasures, most assuredly increasing the value 10 fold. Acid date nickels? Jeweluster? Artificial toning experiments? Fess up. We're all friends here.

    The same thing. Fortunately, I didn't use an eraser on anything rare. But I still have that Seated Liberty Half and the erase marks still show after all these decades. :)

  • SapyxSapyx Posts: 2,204 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @PerryHall said:
    Is it possible to conserve a bent ancient silver coin by heating it to just below the melting point and then to gently flatten it between two pieces of soft pine or similar material?

    Yes. Slow and patient repeated annealing is the key, heat and quenching to try to shrink the crystals inside the silver.

    Google "straighten a bent mediaeval coin" and you should get a couple dozen YouTube demonstration videos of people doing exactly this. But the precise amount of heat and the amount of force you can use takes a lot of practice - and the only thing you can truly practice on are other centuries-old silver coins, since as far as I know there's no real way to artificially age a piece of silver to get authentic crystallization. It's also real easy to end up either with a broken or half-melted coin, both of which would be worth less than the original bent coin.

    Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.
    Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"

    Apparently I have been awarded one DPOTD. B)
  • MaywoodMaywood Posts: 2,086 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Used one as a washer and saved money.

  • seatedlib3991seatedlib3991 Posts: 700 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I am part of the baking soda group. got some worn Indian cents from my Oma when I was 7/8. I thought some water and baking soda would brighten them right up. Turned them the most repulsive color of orange known to humanity. James

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