Silver MS Ikes and US Mint Smearing...

SemperFI

Are there any Ike owners that know how to deal with the whitish smears of mishandling done by the US Mint on the silver uncirculated Ikes in the blue packs. I opened up a few blue packaged ikes and see these smears and wonder what the mint was doing when they were packing these things. I tried dipping a couple test coins that are pretty dinged up and the whitish smears come off but there are these spots that resemble waterspots or watermarks (coin is still wet from dip/water/alcohol). Can the spots be removed? Am I not using the correct method?

I am going thru my junksilver to see what is really junk and what is not.

-matt

supercoin

If you got those thick whitish smears off you did better than I usually do. Most of the time when there's something nasty on those coins it can't be completely removed, at least as far as I know.

Some of the light white "water spots" I think are actually etched into the coin. Peace dollars have a similar problem.

segoja

Figure that problem out and you could make some good $$$$

Dipping can minimize the issue, but still changes the surface on silver Ikes.

Never try this on clads, the luster will be toast.

SemperFI

I just got finished. Two of the best coins appear to be ms67 are heavy in the water spotting left over from the smears and the test coins, well they came out very clean with some very minor spotting. Those are basically silver for a nice BU roll to hold on to. I am not sure what to do with the two nice coins. If I send them in, I am afraid they will drop a grade due to spotting of a possible bad dip when it really was the Mint who did the dipping/smearing. I guess I will just put them in a folder and hold on to them.

The smears, I cannot believe they were large fingerprint smears. Did the Mint wash the coins in a solution (or at least attempt to) or put a coat of some white liquid on them. What ever it was, they do look better now then before.

SemperFI

I have tried dip on some clad coins in the past month with no problems to the coins at all. I guess as long as you have the right amount of dip/water ratio and the dip is not too strong the coins luster will be fine.

DHeath

Matt,

Some of them are fingerprints. I have two 71's in the mint cellophane that have clear white fingerprints.