My Mistake, Your Lesson in photos . . .

[SaginawIan]

Deep in the ground, I found a horribly corroded 2 cent piece that was so covered in green patina it was quite attractive, I must say! Needless to say, date curiosity got the best of me and I decided to try a little homemade electrolosis. I used a 9 volt battery, 2 pieces of speaker wire, a cup of distilled water, and baking soda. I also used my wife's good crystal drinkware to do my experiment (but that's a story for another forum!). Anyway, what you see here is the unzapped coin and how it looks at intervals along the way, finally resulting in a disk almost entirely void of any detail. At least now I know the date, it's an 1867.

What do you think. Should I have left it alone?

Ian

 

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[Yarrum]

Mate I woulda done exactly the same thing . Don't think I woulda regretted it either because you couldn't see that much detail before anyway. A good one for the collection and lesson learned either good or bad.

HH

 

[jeff of pa]

Yes you Definately Improved its Value.

If you actually had 2

one in the uncleaned Condition
and the Cleaned one,

& posted them both on EBay for $10.00

The first one wouldn't get bids.

But I'd believe the cleaned one would.

 

[finderzzs]

They are all correct. The ground did the damage, not you. Must be very acidic soil. Nice find anyways, congrats.

 

[Functional]

Nice non-green disk.

You really should have read the forums first on cleaning copper using a potato. (Anything with green corrosion will have copper in it.) But at least now you know from experience what electrolysis can do to a coin, including silver coins. Electrolysis doesn't really remove the corrosion so much as remove the layer of metal under it, which loosens the corrosion, which is why electrolysis is usually sued as a last resort.

In 1867 there was a brown and a red/brown version, then there were the same versions with a double die obverse, which was worth more. More info here:
http://www.mycoincollecting.com/coinvalues/us-coin-values.html#
And here:
http://www.coinfacts.com/two_cents/1867_two_cents.htm

Now go find some more and this time you'll know that when you see green, think potato.

F.

 

[Southernhunter]

Do you just slit the potato & insert the coin for awhile??

 

[DennisB]

yup.