Rock Tumbler.

Two things.
1. This is on the interwebs forever now, along with every other " look what I just did, aren't they shiney?"
2. Today's common Wheats are tomorrow's ihcs, next week's flying eagle cents, 3 years from now's draped bust cents, & one day as uncommon as the 1793 chain cent(BIG MAYBE). But long before that, they will be somebody else's problem coins.

 

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I can agree with this. Anyone who has ever dug up coins on a metal detector trip knows they usually need something. A tumbler may be a bit extreme for some, but on a common wheatie, you ain't out much anyway!

 

I've been giving Detecto the benefit of the doubt through all sorts of threads that he's started. But if I ever again find myself thinking that perhaps he's not trolling us, I'll revisit this thread, and save myself the trouble of wondering.

Say, Detecto, weren't you going to start a thread singing the praises of pop-up ads with sound?

 

I was beginning to think I was the only one seeing it!

 

Exactly. If I would of had those coins in a bin at a shop, they would not have sold. No one would have wanted them, save for some unexpected newbie.

A rock tumbler is a last resort for coins. It's a last ditch effort to try and make something look appealing to a buyer.

Although I wouldn't stick these out in the bin the next day, put them in a container for a year next to a window, and they will look old again.

The rock tumbler also works good for cleaning modern coinage. If you have a bunch of dirty looking coins in your foreign coin bin, you can clean them up and make them more appealing to buyers.

If it's looks like crap to begin with, then tumble it. If it looks like crap after, you didn't loose anything. If it looks better, you gained something.

Of course you should never tumble some coins regardless. Gold coins, large cents, Indian Head Pennies, etc. It's only for low (less than $1) value coins that you want to make look better.

 

This is called fraud. This post is an abomination to coin collecting as a whole.

 

LOL this thread is hilarious

 

Make it stop! PLEASE make it stop!!

 

Like others have said, I don't see anything wrong with this method of cleaning or any other method if it is being used on coins without numismatic value. You can polish those coins with any method you like. Actually, experimenting with coins of no value using different methods of cleaning can help you to hone your identifying skills for cleaned coins. So, I personally have no problem with this.

That said, if you do have coins that have been dug up or in a fire or otherwise damaged and you want to clean them up (which is acceptable in many instances)...there are many safer ways of doing it than the method described in this thread.

 

I would disagree with this statement. Only the unexpected newbie would willingly buy a coin cleaned in this method over a dirty non-cleaned coin. This last resort is the death blow for these coins from a sales perspective.

 

Evidently, you missed the part where Detecto was promoting this as a method to get more money for your coins when selling.

 

See my next post.

 

Your logic is flawed.

You seem to have this confused with "coin doctoring" which is people making high value coins more desirable.

This is taking coins of extremely low value and cleaning them to make them more sellable.

No one is getting ripped off. If you take a tumbled wheat cent and let it set it a jar for a year, it will darken back to a color of normal circulation. This coloring is natural. Just like freshly minted cents from the mint will darken after so long.

In the end you have what looks like a circulated wheat cent, and that's exactly what it is.

If you take a bunch of modern foreign coinage, that is dirty, and clean it up, who did you rip off? No one.

So if I take a bunch of rusty tools that I purchased at an estate sale, wire brush them, clean them, and make them look nice, I ripped people off? Puh-lease.

 

You Ninja'd me!

 

Ok, let me put this palin and simple. You are altering a coin to make it look "better" in order to make money. Is that doctoring?

 

It's still coin doctoring Detecto. Taking any coin and altering it to make it more desirable to a buyer...even an extremely low value coin is still coin doctoring. There are a few acceptable ways to alter coins (such as dipping) in some instances. But, this is not one of them and there is no way to spin it otherwise.

 

I would never "doctor a coin" I will never take any valuable coin and try to make it look more valuable.

But if you take something that normally would not sell, and make it somewhat desirable, you have not done anything wrong.

If you were given a bunch of modern Kennedy halves that had been in a fire, blackened from heat, and so horrendous that the bank would not accept them, wouldn't you try to clean them so they would? Of course you would, who wouldn't.

If I can take a dirty coin, and make it look like look like something you would normally pull out of your pocket, there is no harm. The rock tumbler just removes dirt and tarnish from coins.

 

Here. Let me "re-write" it from the point of view of someone who collects coins that hopefully have numismatic value, and can be passed on to future generations in the best possible condition, as well as remaining in-line with current thought of the majority of coin lovers, in that cleaning coins is not recommended.

(And yes, I know I'm not "re-writing his sentences, for the most part)

"Many times people on this forum and others say "don't clean coins".

This statement could not be any more honest and correct. You should never clean coins.

However there are sometimes when you will run across coins that you really want to clean, such as:

Clad coins that have been found in the ground, in a fire, had something spilled on them that corroded them, etc.
Silver coins that have been in saltwater or in a fire and that often are entirely black, crusted over, or heavily corroded to the point that they can't be spent or put in a coin machine because they would be rejected.

But before you decide to clean the coins, you need to know if the coin can be spent as money at a store or by putting in a coin counting machine. Some wheat pennies and other older copper coins may also be heavily corroded, and initially, you might want to clean them, but you have to know that some wheat pennies are valuable without cleaning and that cleaning may destroy all or nearly all it's value to a collector. So you might be throwing away money if you just clean them without identifying what coin it is. This is also the same as if it is an older type coin, like the mercury dimes, barber dimes, Indian Head Pennies, Morgan Silver dollars, or very old coins. Just cleaning them may totally destroy their value. I will tell you more about that later, but you should never use a rock tumbler on any coins that may hold value. This rock tumbler process will strip a lot off, and will damage coins. The rock tumbler might not remove all the gross looking junk and dirt on the coins. In some cases, some coins can go beyond help, and nothing will save them.

The rock tumbler is very good for cleaning up junk coins that have no value, and some coins that you have found with a metal detector, cleaning crud off pennies, and brightening silver coins that are "burnt" looking.

Today I acquired some wheat pennies that were "grubby" looking to say the least.

I made sure that NONE of the coins above were valuable coins by checking their dates and mintmarks in the Red Book. Even though the pricing is off in that book, it can give an idea of which years and which mintmarks are valuable. If any of them were valuable (marked as 1.00 or more value at it's lowest value in the book), I would have set those aside and not cleaned them. Here they are in the barrel of the tumbler.

Pea gravel makes a good media. Add water to cover the coins, a bit of liquid soap, and a tablespoon of lemon juice. Now not only can the water action damage the coins, but the liquid soap and the lemon juice are not kind to coins, so that is why I was very careful to only choose my worthless junk coins to clean.
Here is my tumbler. It can hold twelve pounds of rock/coin/water mix.


Six hours later they look like this:


The black colored penny is a steel wheat penny.

Some coins are still dark, you could tumble them further, but they are pitted, further tumbling will just show more pitting.

Although many of them are "bright" looking, in a few months they will darken back to normal.
Don't believe that the tumbling process does not wear any copper off the coin. It does. It just may not be visible to you and to someone without a magnifying glass. But it wears away the surface metal and flattens details. That is why valuable coins should not be put in the tumbler.


So if you have a bunch of coins that you think need cleaned up, the rock tumbler might be the way to go. It's your decision for your coins. Just don't be surprised if you have a valuable coin that you clean this way and later you can not sell it because it has lost it's value.

I told you I would talk about cleaned coins losing value. The best way to describe that is to give an example. Say you find an old half dollar or silver dollar or copper cent and you look in the red book and find that the lowest value for that coin is 20.00. If you don't clean it, but find someone knowledgeable to look at it and appraise it, you may find that it may appraise for 20.00 or maybe a bit less or even a bunch more --- UNCLEANED. Now if you clean it to make it shiny or get the gunk off, and then take it in, it may then appraise for up to 90% or more LESS than if you did not clean it. Many people will appraise a cleaned coin, no matter what grade it would have had if it wasn't cleaned at 25 percent of G4 price, which is almost the lowest price you will find in the red book. So if you found a CC Morgan, and it had lots of dirt on it, but underneath it was an VF40 or AU55 that was worth, say 20.00 in G4, 100.00 VF40 and 140.00 in AU55, and you cleaned it in the tumbler, then it's value would be about 25% of 20.00 (5.00) and not the 100.00 or 140.00. You'd then be better off selling for melt, which would be somewhere in the high teens or low twenties as Junk Silver. This is how you can lose money by cleaning coins, in a rock tumbler or otherwise.

So choose wisely which coins you clean when you "just have to clean coins".

 

I have heard enough. Excuse me while I go update my Ignore List.

 

I'm not "altering it" while it does make copper coins shiny, leaving them in a jar for a year will return them to normal color. As for as cupro-nickel coins, it removes a lot of black and grey from them.