Hi All, I know this subject comes up at times about cleaning coins, but does cleaning a copper IHC or a wheat cent really lowers its grade value? Especially if u use mineral water and a soft tooth brush. I read different opinions on this and I personally like a coin free of dirt. John
i was told by a local coin shop to use mineral water and never a cleaning solution. maybe someone else can add to this.
I'd say dipping is fine to remove dirt and grime but using a tooth brush, you're basically damaging it at that point. To me, there's no such thing as a soft tooth brush to use on a coin, you might as well just use steel wool or any other cleaning tool to damage the coin.
Unless you are experimenting with a few damaged and/or low value coins in order to get an idea of what cleaned copper looks like; I would suggest you leave them alone.
John, I agree with you about the dirt on cents. I would never clean a valuable coin, only because it is such a no no within the circles of numismatics and I would be afraid of damaging it. However, a low grade or non-valuable, album filler...I have to get that dirt off. I have pretty good water pressure in my bathroom sink. I just turn on the hot water and let the water hit it until the dirt is gone. Then pat it completely dry. I just don't understand how an AU cent that someone with dirty hands spent at the gas station can be worth any more than that same coin with the dirt rinsed off. That is crazy to me. I am not talking about polish or chemicals, just good old fashioned H2O.
Have a look at this thread from a few months ago: http://www.cointalk.com/t215818/ After reading this, I became convinced that the overwhelming majority of full-red IHCs sitting in TPG holders have been cleaned, probably within the last decade. It seems near-impossible that so many (look at population counts) could survive a century-plus in their original state given the nature of surface oxidation. The only sane explanation is that careful cleaning must have been done to restore the red color.
John - Mineral water is not what you want to use. Why ? Because it contains minerals, and those minerals will end up deposited on the coin. And no you most definitely do not want to use a toothbrush on a coin, or anything else for that matter. You never want to touch the surface of the coin with anything. There is no brush, fabric, cloth, Q-Tip, or even your fingers, that is soft enough to use to clean a coin. Anything you touch the surface of the coin with will leave behind traces (fine hairline scratches, or even not so fine scratches) of it having been touched. The only method of cleaning a coin that is acceptable is to soak or rinse the dirt & grime off the coin. And there are only a few things you can use to soak or rinse the coin in - distilled water, acetone, & xylene. Now as a general rule you don't want to use acetone on a copper coin. The only time you should use acetone on copper is when you are trying to remove PVC residue. It is best not to use it for anything else. Xylene should only be used when distilled water will not remove whatever is on the coin. Xylene is a solvent and it will remove oils and similar substances. But it should not be used for anything else. Distilled water is your best bet for ordinary dirt & grime, and only distilled water. Do not use tap water, mineral water, soda water, or any other kind of water - just distilled water. You can buy it at the grocery store. And all you should do is put the coin in a small container of the water and let it soak. You don't want to rub the coin with your fingers, a brush, a cloth, or anything else. The most you can do is pick up the coin by the edges only and swish it back and forth in the distilled water. That's it, do nothing else. And if that doesn't take the dirt & grime off the coin then leave the coin alone and accept it as it is.
Why ? I'll bet you'll say the same thing that 99 out of 100 people will say - because it makes it look better. Question is, does it really ? Maybe it looks better to you, but people who know coins will not think it looks better. They will think that it looks unatural, that it looks like it has been "cleaned". And that alone is enough to make them walk away from the coin. They won't even take the time to really look at it to see if it really has been harshly cleaned, they'll just walk away. Well that good old fashioned H2o you're talking about (what comes out your tap) has all sorts of things in it that can cause spots, corrosion, or other damage to the coin. And for that reason you should never use tap water to clean a coin. And did you ever think that while you're letting that coin sit there in the sink with the water pounding down on it to wash the dirt way, that the coin is also being pounded against the sink itself as well as the drain assembly of your sink ? Do you think that repeated pounding against those hard surfaces is not leaving marks on the coin ? I can assure you that it is. So while you might "think" it looks better when you are done, it really doesn't, it looks worse to a trained eye. It's not the dirt being left on the coin that makes it worth more than one you have cleaned. It's the damage that was not done to the coin by the cleaning you did that makes it worth more.
I do not lie them in the sink, I hold them by the edges. And It does make them look better to me. As I said before, I would never do this to a valuable coin. I just do it to my Whitman folder coins to please my eye. I doesn't matter much to me that my F12 1944 wheat cent might have dropped from being worth $0.05 to $0.03 because I rinsed the dirt off. Maybe it is because I watched a segment of a show that used to be on Comedy Central called Upright Citizens Brigade. The segment was called "A double S Pennies". Look it up on youtube, it is halarious.
Anything that you use to touch a coin, regardless how soft, will end up damaging the coin. Once any kind of dirt, grime, or hardened deposit is on the coin, once you move that stuff with anything, the crap that is on the coin will minutely scratch the surface as it's moved around. Soaks in distilled water or mineral oil is by far the safest. I know people who boil the coins in distilled water, but I wouldn't try it myself.
Then other than possible deposits from the tap water, you got nuttin to worry about. But it still won't look natural.
