Have you ever used Deller's Darkener on a coin? If so...
AskRaq
Posts: 2,303
I would like to see some before & after examples (or at least after) so that I can tell what a "darkened" copper coin (IHC, in particular) looks like... thanks!
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Weekend Bumpity-bump.
white and dificult to remove. Photo shown is from a current Forum thread.
Deller's Darkener is basically sulfur and Vaseline paste, to the best of my knowledge.
I use Sutton's mix, which is not commercially sold. It is a recipe concocted by a friend of mine. Basically the same thing. Powdered sulfur and Vaseline.
Here is a coin I recently had to "work on". Note the spot beneath Victoria's chin. It had blackish/greenish active corrosion/verdigris on it. I worked on the affected area, but then the whole area around the spot was unnaturally bright like a cleaned copper or bronze coin would be. I then applied the Sutton's paste and retoned it.
Now you can still see the spot, but the corrosion is stabilized and you can see that it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb anymore. The area surrounding the spot is toned brown like the rest of the coin. When I first was working on the spot, about a third of the obverse of the coin was bright orange from the cleaning. On the remainder of the obverse and all of the reverse I left the original light brown toning alone, and the retoned area is basically indistinguishable from it, though the damage from the corrosion below the chin is still somewhat visible, faintly. I was able to "match up" the retoned area with the untoned/uncleaned original areas on the coin pretty well, with no real effort- I just smeared the Vaseline/sulfur paste on the cleaned area. Actually I smeared it all over the whole coin and then wiped it off. The sulfur only worked on the area that had been cleaned. The originally toned areas were unaffected, since they still had the original "skin".
The Sutton's Mix I use is a little stronger than Deller's Darkener. Deller's is kind of weak, in my opinion. But still worthwhile, if you can't find powdered sulfur to make your own paste.
I have found these sulfur pastes work best on a freshly-cleaned coin. If a coin has formed any kind of "skin" at all after it was cleaned, the sulfur might not work, or will not work as fast, in darkening the coin. You need raw bare metal that has been stripped clean for the darkeners to have instant effects, in my experience. Sometimes I have had cleaned coins with unnatural toning that had to be freshly cleaned again just to get the darkener to work. (No loss there, since they were already cleaned and unnatural looking- I just recleaned these and then darkened them).
Note that after I darken a coin, I completely rub all the Vaseline paste off. No greasy coins here.
This large cent I found with my metal detector was coated in a hard crystalline concretion from the sandy soil it had lain in for more than a century and a half. It required abrasive cleaning (with a fine brass wire brush and or extra fine steel wool), which sounds horrible, but I only used the abrasives to get rid of the mineralized crust, which was similar to what you see on uncleaned ancient coins. As soon as I exposed metal, I backed off on the abrasive methods and went to soaking in olive oil and mildly acidic things like ketchup or worcestershire sauce. Then I gradually had all the crud off it, but I had a weirdly-colored, obviously-cleaned large cent. So I retoned it with the sulfur/Vaseline paste.
The end result is surprisingly good. Aside from some small pits in it as a result of its long sojourn in the ground, the coin looks good and you would probably never guess it went through so much cleaning.
(Sorry for the small picture. Too bad I didn't take "before" pictures of these.)
<< <i>Dellers wll leave a residue on coper coins which in time turns
white and dificult to remove. Photo shown is from a current Forum thread.
like the gunk on that copper.
old men + coins = clean coins
If you find a piece that will be further damaged by corrosion, I think the right thing to do is to try to stop the corrosion.
I disagree with using a darkener to try to fool a future buyer into thinking the coin is something it isn't, but I don't think that is what LordMarcovan is doing.
Conservation is, in most cases, a good thing.
Fraud is, and probably always will be, wrong.
<< <i>these forums and dippers/cleaners/scoundrels are bonded together
like the gunk on that copper.
old men + coins = clean coins >>
I am glad that there are dippers/cleaners/strippers/toners/darkeners/etc... on here, along with the collectors that conserve coins & those that collect only 100% original surface coins, to share their knowledge with those of us who have not been exposed to every type of coin "issue" that may arise.
These members can "show me" & "tell me" what to look for, and what to look out for.
They can also give valuable insight into what might be done to "undo" a previous "touching up" on a coin that I have in my collection - or how to tell if something has been done to one of them that I wouldn't recognize at all. I appreciate everyone's input on the forum - whether I agree with it or not.
When I opened the Whitman books a few years later, I found that many of the Lincolns had been destroyed. I have other books completed in the 1960s and 1970s that never had this problem, and I've always handled my coins carefully.
As I lined up these coins for this picture, I notice now for the first time that all of the corroded cents are copper-plated zinc. None of the older cents have the corrosion. I guess that the Mint's final rinse methodology must suck for circulation coins saved longterm.
For several years, I thought that the Whitman must've had a contaminant in the paper, because the rims were the most affected. Knowing what I know now, should I not rinse or clean the residues off all Lincolns made since 1982 with a buffer solution and then water, if I plan to save them for a collection?
I knew it would happen.
<< <i>these forums and dippers/cleaners/scoundrels are bonded together like the gunk on that copper. old men + coins = clean coins >>
Easy does it. Back in 1966 an old wood frame building was torn down here
in Indianapolis. It was first used as bakery for many years and after that
many other types of busines. One of the demolition workers found an 1826
large cent in the debris and I acquired it for a cost. It was incrusted in blackend
flower as hard as cement and had already suffered pocket knife scratches.
After spending many hours cleaning the coin it was recolored with Dellers
and placed in a large snap-tite with a short description of where found ect.
Having saved for posterity a tiny bit of history I was very proud of this.
My question for all who would belittle such a task is -- what has been hurt?
You are the king!
<< <i>Thanks Lordmarcovan, for the detailed input. I take it that it being sulfur based... there is no "washing it off"?? >>
You rub off all the Vaseline. If you mean, is it reversible, or in other words, can the darker color be removed, then yes- you just clean the coin again. But no, it doesn't just "wash off" with soap and water.
<< <i>LordMarcovan: After a coin has coin through this darkening/retoning process is it simple for a dealer/collector to tell that it has been played with? Are there any tell-tale signs other than residue that might end up later on that will be somewhat obvious? >>
It all depends. Some (like my 1837 large cent above) turn out pretty well, but the brown is usually a shade "off". It's fairly detectable if you know what you're looking for, I suppose. A cleaned coin that's had its surfaces stripped is duller and more lackluster in appearance, even after it's been darkened- there is no repairing that. So after darkening, the coin might be brown again, but it will still have a somewhat dull appearance.
My doctoring of the 1888 Jersey 1/12 shilling above is slightly less detectable because I did not strip the whole coin down- only the area that needed doctoring because of active corrosion. I improved the coin's appearance but could not completely undo the damage. After all that work, I was somewhat miffed to discover, upon looking in the Krause catalog, that I had just saved a coin that would've only been worth two bucks or so, problem free! Haha. So now it's worth a buck at best. But who cares- it's a cool old coin that needed a little TLC. I carried it as a pocket piece for a little while.