Featured Toners: There's not always treasure at the end of the rainbow

Personally, I would suspect the reaction with both aluminum and copper coins and acetone was due to impurities of the metal or something on the metal more than the acetone. Both aluminum and copper are such reactive metals it would not surprise me that they and not gold, silver, and nickel were involved.

 

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Maybe. But I can imagine that one of the "impurities" involved is just plain old oxygen dissolved in the acetone or adsorbed on the metal. That's going to be awfully hard to get rid of. It's a lot easier to exclude light (especially blue light) than to exclude oxygen, at least in my usual hangouts.

 

I've not had a problem (yet) with copper and bronze coins in acetone, just the aforementioned brass or brass-plated.

That said, I always let the coin soak inside a dark cabinet, so there's no light exposure, and I don't let copper coins soak as long as I might other types of coins.

 

Those are definitely treasure at the end of the rainbow. LOVE THEM!!! The carbon spots, while far from ideal, do not bother me, nor do they render those coins unbeautiful. I think that it is all relative--would it have been better without them--YES. However, they are still gorgeous.

 

Thank you all for the information so I guess silver is ok to use acetone on and copper only in the dark lol.

 

I'm with Morgandude on this one.

 

It depends on the method used to AT the coin. Acetone will remove organic contaminants from the surface of a coin and others that are acetone soluble. Not all contaminants or artificial toning are acetone soluble. Acetone insoluble compounds (including many inorganic compounds) cannot be removed by rinsing a coin in acetone. So if the color comes off in acetone, it is definitely AT or debris/haze and not natural toning; however, the fact that it is not removed does not mean that it is NT.

 

What ever happened to the coins in the original post?