? Thanks for looking.
vpone said:
, but not the cleaning methods.
In general, for people who are not coin collectors or have experience with it it's a bad idea. Warm water... no, that's not bad but people have a tendancy to take it to the extreme in which case it is a bad thing. The local dealers junk box is always filled with improperly cleaned coins and nobody wants them. I would agree more so with a coin that is unidentifiable in which case you don't have anything to lose but this one isn't THAT bad.. readable date and all... little rinse in the water might help. I think your last sentence really says it all though... talking about removing dirt, not polishing but polishing is exactly what many people end up doing. On a seperate note, I think some before and after cleaning pics of coins under a new thread in the coins section would be great-Don in South Jersey said:vpone said:
I have posted many times and have cleaned more large cents and colonial coppers than most have even seen and cleaning the dirt off does not ruin the coin, if you see detail and it comes off with the dirt removal, the coin was already ruined and only being held together by dirt and corroded metal. Leaving the coin dirty and unidentifiable makes no sense at all, and by the way, the coin in this post looks cleaned already to me. Blame the farmers fertilizers, acid soil, acid rain, cow pee
Next time you say you ruined a coin cleaning it, post good before and after photographs and we can discuss what happened and why. I have many, many examples of before and after photographs and have seen it all on good, bad and ugly, but never would I say not to clean a dirty old copper coin. Remember, we are talking about removing dirt, not polishing.
Don
