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Cleaning coins with Brillo pads
pcunix
Posts: 620 ✭
I bet that title got your attention :-)
True story: back in the 70's when my brother-in-law and I were playing at week-end coin dealing, we had an opportunity to buy some silver half dollars. I don't remember how many - 10, 20, 30? but it was my brother-in-law who went to look at them. He'd been called by a family he knew because they knew he dabbled in coins..
He told me that he walked into their kitchen and saw the coins proudly laid out on the table for his examination. He said he was excited when he saw them because he immediately could see that they were Liberty Seated halves. However, his excitement quickly turned to horror when he saw what had been done to the coins: each one beautifully polished up with a Brillo pad. Worse, this wasn't some decades old error of enthusiasm: they had just done this themselves!
The coins were probably at least AU, maybe better. It's a bit hard to say post-Brillo, of course, but we would have been able to give them decent money had they not been so "helpful". As it was, we bought them for cheap money (I have no memory of what) and sold them for equally cheap money over the next few weekends.
I've always wondered where those coins ended up. They may very well have gone to scrap as they weren't worth much more then (if at all). However, should you see a high grade Liberty Seated Half Dollar on Ebay that is ruined by a Brillo pad, that could be one of them.. I see somebody offering a well mangled example on Ebay right now: these were a bit worse if my memory is accurate.
True story: back in the 70's when my brother-in-law and I were playing at week-end coin dealing, we had an opportunity to buy some silver half dollars. I don't remember how many - 10, 20, 30? but it was my brother-in-law who went to look at them. He'd been called by a family he knew because they knew he dabbled in coins..
He told me that he walked into their kitchen and saw the coins proudly laid out on the table for his examination. He said he was excited when he saw them because he immediately could see that they were Liberty Seated halves. However, his excitement quickly turned to horror when he saw what had been done to the coins: each one beautifully polished up with a Brillo pad. Worse, this wasn't some decades old error of enthusiasm: they had just done this themselves!
The coins were probably at least AU, maybe better. It's a bit hard to say post-Brillo, of course, but we would have been able to give them decent money had they not been so "helpful". As it was, we bought them for cheap money (I have no memory of what) and sold them for equally cheap money over the next few weekends.
I've always wondered where those coins ended up. They may very well have gone to scrap as they weren't worth much more then (if at all). However, should you see a high grade Liberty Seated Half Dollar on Ebay that is ruined by a Brillo pad, that could be one of them.. I see somebody offering a well mangled example on Ebay right now: these were a bit worse if my memory is accurate.
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About a dozen years ago I came upon a dealers table at a show in metro Detroit. Two elderly ladies were seated at the table showing the dealer an album of coins for sale. I was focused on what was in the cases but overheard a part of the conversation. The ladies saw an ad for the coin show and decided it was time to sell the old man's collection. I couldn't tell for sure, but they looked like a Dansco full of walkers from my vantage point - but could have been a type set. They proudly proclaimed that they spent the previous evening scrubbing the coins to get them clean. My gut knotted up and I had to leave.
I felt sorry for the dealer who had to break the bad news to the ladies that they had ruined the coins. Didn't even go back to find out the rest of the story - what a shame.
My raw coin albums have had a label on them "Warning - Do not clean" ever since.
“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." - Thomas Jefferson
My digital cameo album 1950-64 Cameos - take a look!
They coulda hit the coins with some sort of fine hi speed buffer. But then they would be coin Docs !
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
<< <i>This is one of the advantages of sonically sealed slabs. It's unlikely a coin in a slab will be messed with unless the heir/owner goes to the trouble to get a hammer to smash the plastic or squeeze it in a vice to get the coin out which is unlikely. >>
I hadn't though of that, but it is an excellent point!
<< <i>This is one of the advantages of sonically sealed slabs. It's unlikely a coin in a slab will be messed with unless the heir/owner goes to the trouble to get a hammer to smash the plastic or squeeze it in a vice to get the coin out which is unlikely. >>
In which case, they'd probably ruin the coin getting it out.
Uncirculated Large cents dipped in copper cleaner, silver dollars made nice the shiny again using Brillo Pads .... the stuff of horror stories. Wonderful material lost forever. Wow.
Dave
I used to try to show people the difference between their harshly scrubbed, mirrior-like-so-bright-you-can-see-it-from-space coins and an original one and point out the differences. This practice stopped after just a few attempts, because the customers would argue that now they were sure that their cleaned coins looked way better than what I had shown them.
Life At The Coin Shop
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