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Seriously need cleaning advice! Liberty Nickles

One of these has most of its design and all letters but looks yucky!!! helpLiberty

Comments

  • Forget it Stacey, once they're black they're black. I have never found anything short of a acid bath that will remove the black color.
  • BillJonesBillJones Posts: 34,294 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Yea, forget it! They are black and crusty, and the situation is that they are just like a green corroded cent. The black stuff is oxidized metal, that's what the coins are made of.

    Most collectors don't realize it, but this is what nickel coins look like when they corrode. The same happens to the thick, white cents of 1857 to 1864.
    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 ... ?
  • Nickles are nickles - one of my very best V Nickels is as black as night - likewise my 1919 Buffalo.

    Stick out like sore thumbs.
    "I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my Grandfather did, as opposed to screaming in terror like his passengers."
  • I've tried all the chemical fixes I know, nothing has much of an effect. I haven't tried the electric solution yet.

    I've heard it does wonders for ancients, and buried stuff. Uses one of those box-plug transformers, and takes a week or so.

    Any ancient or dug-coin electrically-minded folks out there with experience?
    Every day is a gift.
  • I revived some blakened coins once with Lime-Away. I don't know if it would work on those or not but I don't think it would hurt.....try it at your own risk...
    If you give up your rights, in order to maintain your freedom. You will most likely end up losing both!
  • I found the Link I'd been looking for. The author mentions that Liberty V nickels clean up nicely with one of the methods here.

    I'd like to know if this works, but of course I can't recommend trying the methods.

    Let me first say that cleaning coins is at least a venal sin, and chemicals and electricity are intrinsically dangerous to our species.
    I'm also afraid of electricity, and the warning in the article about fires being possible/likely, leave the electrolysis process not unattended, and with adult supervision if possible. Sober is best.

    'nuff said.
    Every day is a gift.

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