What's the worst thing you've done to a coin?
bennybravo
Posts: 1,915 ✭✭✭
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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Stuck it up my nose.
Nothing is as expensive as free money.
Thank you POCKETCHANGE. The compulsion to stick coins up your nose must be very difficult for you. Thanks for sharing.
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Anyone else coat a cent with mercury?
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
First, lost it.
Second, cleaned it when I was kid.
I have never heard this, please explain!
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Over 15 years ago I drilled a hole in what used to be a BU cent and put it on my key ring.
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
This is an awesome display of a good luck charm. Kudos.
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When I was a teen in the 1980s, I dipped a common date AU Morgan in Pepsi or Coca-Cola thinking the acids in the soda would clear some of the haze. I still have it and over time it didn't seem to make much difference.
A few years later as a young adult in the late 1990s, I had another Morgan body-bagged by, of all services ICG due to whizzing. Even though I paid very little for it, I was a bit upset about it and proceeded to spike it and scrape it against the concrete just outside my apartment, rationale being that I didn't want anyone else in the future to think it was a problem-free BU coin.
Better than sticking it up some stranger's nose.
peacockcoins
I donated some copper cents to the chrome plating guy for testing his vats once, OK maybe Twice.
Well I won $99.90 
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
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
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.
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.
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.
May not be the healthiest thing you ever did.
As a young lad, I took several of my big brother's Lincoln cents out of his blue Whitman folder and cleaned them with baking soda and a Q-tip. I thought they turned out real nice! Big brother wasn't so pleased. I now have that folder with the white baking soda stains still on the page.
Cleaned some coins with baking soda....live and learn as they say.
i've lost 3 Morgans on flights (pocket coins) and all were CC's.....:(
bob
Completely dissolved them in acid
Railroad tracks.
DPOTD-3
'Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery'
CU #3245 B.N.A. #428
Don
Scribbled on a Morgan dollar with a marker. My father threatened to kill me, but eventually turned it into a key ring.
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.
I know some of you were waiting for this...
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.
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
In the early 1960's I took a US dime and placed it between pieces of leather and started hammering.
The dime grew from it's normal 18 mm size to 22 mm.
Large dime and regular dime
Needless to say I kept it as it was impossible to spend.
The Mysterious Egyptian Magic Coin
Coins in Movies
Coins on Television
Gosh, at least it's not cleaned!
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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...
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That just didn't fit on the label
Oh no!!! Please don't let @emeraldATV see this thread!
Disclaimer: I'm not a dealer, trader, grader, investor or professional numismatist. I'm just a hobbyist. (To protect me but mostly you! 🤣 )
I use to place pennies on the railroad tracks and let them get flattened.
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
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.
My brothers and i coated coated many a penny with mercury, rolled drops of the stuff around on our wood floor, finally would lose it, usually under the sofa or something.
Our dad worked in a lab, and now and then he would bring home a tiny vial of the stuff for us to play with.
This was in the 1950s before anyone
(at last in our family)
KNEW ANY BETTER!
30+ years coin shop experience (ret.) Coins, bullion, currency, scrap & interesting folks. Loved every minute!
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 😂
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.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded one DPOTD.
Tried to tone it in the oven while placed in the middle of a a circle of sulfur powder.
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!
When too young, undersold a coin once.
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.
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.
Dropped accidentally creating a rim ding.
Very interesting. Did you make a video of it?
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
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.
Worst thing I’ve ever done to a coin?
As many of you know, I threw away a proof 64 Stella
In 1986/87
Where is my prize?
for PCGS. A 49+-Year PNG Member...A full numismatist since 1972, retired in 2022
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.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded one DPOTD.
Used one as a washer and saved money.
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