Need some advice on cleaning some coins

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I agree DON"T!!!!

 

The subject of conserving coins cracks me up. It reminds me of the preacher who spends Sunday morning lecturing on the evils of fornication but come evening you find this same preacher cruising the red-light district.

 

Not to get in the middle of the disagreement, but I always use distilled water as well. My reasoning is I would prefer to know that the rehydrating substance was pure water, and not some other chemical from the air getting in the middle of it. I know its one solid layer of H2O, and no random sulphur or chloride atom got in between the water and the surface.

Just my opinion/thought.

For ancients, especially with impaired surfaces, I use Renwax for a barrier. That is a whole other discussion though.

Chris

 

Just to let everyone know, I ignored most the advice on cleaning coins because there were so many different opinons and put all the coins, except the Morgans, into a plastic dish with some warm water and a drop of Sunlight dish detergent for a few minutes, took them out, rinsed with warm tap water in another dish and pat dryed them with a soft paper towel. I am not losing any sleep over the fact I washed them like this and won't be flushing them down the toilet anytime soon as one of the posters suggested.
I should have said when I posted that these were old, worn silver coins that were in and out of hundreds of pockets over the years.

 

What's that last post doing here , looks like spam to me .

 

You can do as you like sir but I believe everyone here would agree with me that both tap water and detergent contain chlorine, which can be horrible for coins. I believe distilled water as a final rinse is always a good step. It cheap, or free, so not real reason to not take this minimum step.

Chris

 

I was unaware that dish soap has clorine in it. I have also found out, since washing them, that even leaving them on a paper towel to dry is not good as paper contains sulpher which reacts with silver.

 

I;m glad they were junk coins , dish soap may have some harsh chemicals in it , I tried it once on some old junk coins and believe me they changed color , and not for the better . Read the ingredients in some dishsoaps . Also this advice was given with your best interest , it's yours to take or leave as you did . Doubt if there's chlorine in dishsoap , but there is in most tapwater .

 

Any coin in any shape is worth more uncleaned

 

You can't make a generalized statement like that because it is wrong, wrong, wrong.

 

I'm a little curious why everyone's so afraid of chlorine? Is it because of PVC? If so, here's a little inorganic chemistry 101 for ya'all. Cl is not the real problem, it is actually quite innocuous. Turns out that when PVC degrades it breaks down into more than just "Cl", in fact it breaks down and releases HCl, which is the real problem. In this case the "H" is the problem and the "Cl" is just along for the ride. So avoiding "Cl" containing water isn't a bad thing nor is it a good thing. A better argument for using distilled or deionized water would be that it leaves no residual salts behind and I would agree with that statement. But to say the use of distilled water is to avoid any damaging chlorine salts, then I would have to disagree with that statement.

 

I was always taught that chlorine promotes bronze disease, that is the main reason I avoid any chlorine containing products. Plus, distilled water is so cheap and easy to use why would you not use it versus tap water, which is an unknown entity.

 

Well, a chlorine salt, as in "Cl-", is a pretty happy camper and doesn't interact with much in its environment. However, chlorine that is incorporated within a molecule is another story as it is always looking for a spare electron to complete its octet. This form of chlorine will, as you mentioned, searches for electron rich atoms such as copper that it can oxidize and hence this is the bad actor chlorine. I suppose it all depends upon what chlorine "type" you're exposing your coin to. So thinking about it, using distilled water can't be a bad thing in anyway, so I agree. It's better to be safe than sorry.

 

Brillo brushes and sandpaper work well.

 

The chlorine anion is very aggressive toward ALL metals. You're making it sound like it's perfectly fine and that's not true at all.

 

That is absolutely not the case. Cl- is benign as it's quite satisfied with it's full octet of electrons. What else can it do? It certainly won't give up any electrons and it has no room for more, it's "dead in the water" so to speak. It's the chlorine that is NOT at the ionic stage you have to worry about. Check your inorganic books again. Cl- is one happy camper, for lack of another word.

 

I agree 100%, can''t go wrong with distilled water!