When you HAVE to clean a coin....

boatbldr

I recently took up metal detecting. Today I dug up a couple of wheat cents, but they were so cruddy I HAD to take a scotch bright to the area of the date to determine the mintage. They turned out to be a 1918 and a 1919s, not particularly valuable, but the question arises for future finds. If I find something potentially valuable, how much should I clean the coin that has been sitting in the ground for 100 or more years?

Cladiator

Soak it in olive oil for a day or two and lots of that crud will losen up.

savoyspecial

there's always the potato trick

mojoman

I have found a few things that do help. I use a Jewlery vibrating sonic cleaner (around 10-15 at wal-mart) add TSP and WITH WARM (this is also avalible at wal-mart for around $2.00 a box ) after that gets off most of the crud a nylon brush helps to ,I use a 9 volt battery and the TSP this acts ike a electro cleaner(I use to be a lab tech for a eletro plating company) I have been doing this method on Roman coins that have a 1000+ years of dirt on them and I have got really good results with it. Hope it helps ? MoJo

use alligator clips attach to pos and neg on the battery then put the pos in the solution the other to the coin ,you will see it working after a while you can switch the connections and it will help

boucharda

Will it work quicker if you plug it into the wall outlet??

golfer72

Just say they were found in a shipwreck and they have been "conserved". Then it is ok. Cleaned, not ok.

windwhispersintrees

Dilute CLR cleaner with water.