1875 Shield Nickle

[archaeon]

Evening Folks! Went to the site where I found the cache of mucket flints and pulled a crusty sheild nickle, it's my first! Old coins hard to come by in Floirda....
I am not new at detecting, but I am new at restoring coins, except for putting copper and brass in olive oil for a long time...could someone please explain the best way to clean old nickles? I also found the V nickle a few weeks back at the same site....(also my first V)

 

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[baspinall]

I love it. A shielded is on my want list. Good going on that area.

Brian

 

[CRUSADER]

First's is what its all about for me. I don't think it matters what it is or what age it is, if its your first its a day to remember.

Happy Hunting

 

[Dred Pirat Dodd]

Wow. Sweet coin. I live in the Burg myself (38th ave n.), so I know what you mean about old coins being scarce. PM me if you wanna go hunt. I'd love to swap stories and knowledge.

 

[Admiral de Salee]

Great nickel!! A Shield is on most everyone's list.

If I ever find one, I'll probably mistake it for a 2-center. I've never seen that shield on any coins but those two types.

 

[BuckleBoy]

Congratulations on the Shield Nickel!


The soil where you are seems to leave a "crust" over nickels... I'd be hesitant to remove that crust. It appears that there is red patina underneath the crust, and if you get the coin down to that you may not be able to see as much detail. (Of course, the crust may flake off anyhow over time...)

I haven't really found a satisfactory way to clean nickels. Salt and vinegar method is the best of what I've tried, but I've come to the conclusion that I think they look best as-dug.


Copper coins the peroxide method works wonders on. (But you will not get results if the coins have olive oil on them already.)



Cheers,


Buckleboy

 

[Hill Billy]

Good job there Archie, I found my first this year too.Didn't know you guys were detecting down there, I'll be sure to bring my detector when I come down south. Congrats

 

[crazyjarhead]

WTG on the first shield nickle

 

[archaeon]

thanks folks! i will be leaving the nickle as found....

 

[JerV3]

Nice sheild,

They are hard to come by here in the NE also. I've been fortunate enough to have found about 5 of them. But they don't come often. And they hardly ever come out in good shape. Those actually don't look bad. Let them soak all yr in olive oil now.

HH Jer

 

[aa battery]

congrats on your 1st

 

[archaeon]

olive oil works on nickels?

 

[curbdiggercarl57]

Check the back of the V-Nickel for a mint mark. (To the the left of the bottom of the coin) Hard to beat two firsts at one hunt, WTG.

 

[archaeon]

thanks curbdigger!, would that be the shield side?

 

[woody50]

Archaeon, copper, bronze and brass metal items are one of the hardest things to get clean. Like buckleboy says, if you remove too much the fine detail can be lost. Of course it depends what the gunk is on the coin, and how much. Bronze coins in general are wrecked by today's chemical / lime mix spread on farmland and most have lost their features.

Here are some ideas (no guarantee's)! Always rinse things off with distilled water when you are done, dry until it is really dry, and then seal with microcrystal wax or something like that. The tools that you should have are toothpicks, soft brushes, a toothbrush with shortened (cut off) bristles, and things like that..

1) One method that I use for these coins is to use Olive Oil. Put the object in the oil overnight or longer, then use a toothpick carefully to get dirt out between the letters, and then repeat. And repeat...and repeat...and, well you get the picture. This process can take days, weeks, or even months. You must be careful with anything you do to the coin, if it is valuable of course. Try it first on coins that you know are not worth anything first.

I am not saying that this is the most wonderful way to clean copper and such (I just said its is very hard to clean these things), and olive oil is a bit on the acid side so there is always a chance that it 'could' damage the patina.

One improvement can be made in the above description. If you have or can get an old coffee maker, you know one of those things that have a 'keep warm' metal plate on the bottom, then you can put your object and oil in say a very small glass container and put it on the plate. Turn on the maker of course. That will improve the process, but still it can take a long time. The advantage of this method is that the object will in the most cases never be much worse off than when you started. Many many people use this method.

The method can also be used with silver coins, add a little lemon juice to the oil, then using the 'keep warm' plate use the procedure above.

Hey, I know it takes forever, but you WILL be amazed at the final product. The key in this method is removing the gunk by a tiny layer by layer, and not damaging the patina...

2) Buy some acid free vaseline, and rub some on the coin. Let it sit for some time and then carefully rub or with a soft brush brush it off. And, just like all the methods, repeat.

3) This is another method that I have heard of : If you wish to stop further deterioration clean the coin up as much as possible. Place coin in Bensotriazole solution for 10hrs, bake dry and glaze with liquid plastic / wax to seal. I am not sure if this method removes or changes the patina.....

4) Some people use ammonia thinned out to 10% to clean the coins, then rinse with distilled water.

Be careful with bronze disease (bright green spots). You must remove that mechanically, if you don't it will continue to eat up a coin or artifact. Then the professionals treat it with BENZOTRIAZOLE (Benzotriazole in Ethanole) to stop it then, but I don't know how to tell you do do that. I do know that they use about a 6-7% solution for a hour to a day to stop the disease. Then dry it carefully and wax it.


REMEMBER try all methods on not valuable coins or objects before your valuable item. OR JUST LEAVE THE OBJECT IN THE CONDITION IT WAS WHEN YOU FOUND IT. This does not apply if the object has bronze disease!

 

[archaeon]

thank you very much Woody!

 

[Detectingfreak]

nice job on the nickles!

 

[woody50]

Re: 1875 Shield Nickel

No problem Archaeon glad to help. I know there are 1000's ways to do this, and maybe someone else out there will comment and give their ideas...! Being new to this forum, just looked, there is a Cleaning and Preservation board here under Research/Techniques.

What I forgot to say, since these nickels are 75% copper and 25% nickel I think you should treat it as described, and since it contains nickel it should come out even better. So using one of the methods I mentioned should work.

Here is some idea what it is (Nickel)

Nickel and coppernickel. Very many modern coins are made out of nickel or coppernickel. Nickel is a very hard material and is not magnetise. It is the hardest of the precious metals and does not really produce oxide and do not tarnish in the presence of sulfur so with a pure nickel coin you really don't have to do much with it. If a pure nickel coin is tarnished you can just use a cloth that is dunked in ammonia. After that rinse, again with distilled water, and dry and seal.

BTW I didn't mention why we use distilled water to rinse? A coin or object that has been in the ground for a long time WILL become a bit or more porous and will absorbed mineral ions in the ground. When you rinse or let such a coin sit in distilled water for a short time the distilled water will in popular terms just 'suck' all those mineral ions out of the coin, bringing the metal back to its original composition. You can think of the water as a sponge, just sucking the ions out of the coin. I am not sure how long you should leave it in the water though, and its difficult to know. Of course the ions don't disappear, they just remain in the water. So if the object is large leaving it in the water for say a day, then changing the water and repeating could be necessary. This is all wet thumb work, at home we can't measure the used water to see how many ions are present ever repeat period, so don't know how long to use it. For a coin I just put it in the water (after cleaning) for a hour.

If you repeat for a large item don't forget to replace the water with fresh distilled water.

Oh yea, instead of using distilled water (expensive) you can use deionized water, but I have heard that the two waters are NOT the same, and that distilled water is better. But if its too expensive just use deionized water, it is better than nothing!