Cleaning Advice needed on an old IH penny

[Ray S S]

Greetings, This afternoon I was talking with a new friend who has a Petting farm. The other
day, one of their pot-belly pigs dug a hole next to the fence. She knelt down the shove the
dirt back in the hole and she spied a penny laying on the loose soil. She picked it up and
looked at it and discovered that it was an old Indian head with the date 1864. She showed it
to me and it is in pretty good condition. The lettering and the head are pretty well defined.
There is a tiny spot that looks like corosion partially covering the 4th number that looks like
a 4. The edge and backside are also pretty good with 2 very small nicks in the edge that
looks fresh. It is pretty expensive to have it professionally cleaned and I was sure I could
get some good cleaning advice here. I saw down a little lower there is a post about cleaning
Indian heads with hot peroxide. From the pictures it did a good job. But I saw here on Tnet
a couple weeks ago about someone, whose coin was messed up with peroxide. Does being
hot make the difference? How about olive oil? I remember reading about that being used
for cleaning coins, but can't remember if it was for silver or copper.

I would like to be able to to help her, but I don't know which is the best stuff to use and
don't want to tell her about something that might damage such an old coin.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

Ray

 

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[DevilDog812]

i would try dropping it in some boiling hydrogen peroxide, but wait for more replies first

 

[Ray S S]

Thanks devildog, for your reply.

 

[Th3Offspring]

i would try dropping it in some boiling hydrogen peroxide, but wait for more replies first

I agree with you, peroxide works wonders on some coins!

 

[sniffer]

I have used hot peroxide before, it works great, however, if you do it too much the penny will come out looking orange with no shine. so be careful