to clean or not to clean
alfonse
Posts: 4
I know the cardinal rule concering cleaning found coins but am curious, how do they go about cleaning discolored or blackened silver coins found from ship wrecks??????? Does that diminish their value?
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Comments
Yes, the cleaning might affect their value somewhat, but with any sea-salvaged nongold coin, it is pretty much understood that it has been cleaned, as a matter of necessity.
This is why cleaning (at least, proper cleaning) of ancient coins is not as big a taboo as it is with more modern ones. It is pretty much understood that most ancient coins come into the market as a result of buried hoards, and buried coins often have to be cleaned.
Obviously, the more original and less cleaned a coin is, the better, but sometimes cleaning is necessary to render a coin identifiable or collectible. Nobody wants a coal-black, encrusted slug on their hands.
As a metal detectorist, I can attest to this. Most of my finds have been cleaned, as a matter of necessity. Some of the silver coins I dug a decade ago now have quite attractive secondary toning on them, from sitting in my album for years after their cleaning. Only a few times can I recall digging silver coins that were nice enough to just rinse the dirt off and not dip or scrub. One particular 1910 Barber dime comes to mind. It was nice and grey and attractive, right out of the dirt. All I had to do was rinse the loose soil off it. But that is the exception rather than the norm.