Milk Spots- Are They Such a Big Deal?

Wispy smudgy looking things are NOT what is called "milk spots". "Milk spots" connotes a nearly round or oval whitish thing. For kids and other people who like fanciful stories, like Admirals, Generals, and CEO's, you might call them "Angel Sneezes".

Krispy, whatever those marks are on the proofs you showed, they are NOT what anyone else calls "milk spots". You get your own name for your smudges, but "milk spots" is taken by the kind of thing Doug showed. Different animal completely, krispy.

 

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My friend that is not an example of "despicable"...let me find some of the ones I have found and post them...those are very light and mild compared to some out there. But I can see how they would distract a potential buyer.

 

When I read this it took me just the first few sentences to discover that this has nothing to do about the thread. It seems personal. That's find and dandy...but mabye it could be done in PM. I will agree with one thing you mentioned...there seems to be around a dozen people on these forums that feel they are CT moderators or that their knowledge is supreme and finite and everyone else is WRONG....WRONG...WRONG.

It's called a God-like complex and most people don't like it when it is exhibited. These fourms are turning into a whose pee pee is bigger than the other. It just seems that there is some sort of competition going on. Then there is the calling out of people which serves no good purpose other than the one doing the calling out.

I am just saying. I value the information that is posted in these fourms; I dont care for the bickering amongst respected posters. Wasn't it Rodney King that once said..."can't we all just get along". Thank you for your time and enjoy what remains of your day.

 

You have stumbled upon a fundamental truth - coin people are usually NOT particularly sociable. We are opinionated, doctrinaire and generally not a whole bunch of fun to be around. In short, the divorce rate among coin people is high for a reason.

 

I don't think you can see how silly your reasoning is. You base this on shape and judge from that alone what is or isn’t a so called milk-spot. Upon no other investigation than an image and a circular-bias do you then suppose you’ve deduced this with absolute conviction.

How does shape have anything to do with this? Be it a spot or a smudge of something, both were once in a more liquid state. Perhaps a rounder more defined circular or ovoid shape splashed or fell onto a coin at some stage of the coin’s production. Perhaps it was a liquid in full strength or of a greater viscosity allowing it to retain a more solid and circular shape. Perhaps it was a partially diluted or half rinsed away “spot” that was once more clearly roundish. If partially diluted or weaker in concentration, it may loose its shape under a rinse and become less round, taking on something like a smudge or a reticulated residue after what parts of the substance could evaporate.

Don't be so superficially bound to your definition of these spots by shape. You too have presented nothing to prove that shape alone can be cited for what is or isn't related to what is a lay term, "milk spot". What's next, an ellipse is not a sphere? And shall we next be told that an ovoid "milk spot" is not perfectly round enough to be a "milk spot”, too?

 

Kurt is embedded with 'Captain Crunch' reasoning......

 

Initially, it was $50 grand. it may still be that.

 

A number of years ago the spotting on a NGC slabbed ASE was examined using a technique called ESCA Electron Spectroscopy Chemical Analysis aka XPS x-ray photoelecton spectroscopy. The only element found other than silver was chlorine leading to the conclusion that the milk spots are composed of silver chloride. The most likely source of the chloride is from hydrochloric acid possibly used as a cleaning agent during the planchet preparation process. I was at one time in contact with the head quality control person for the mint and she had confirmed that it was most likely silver chloride too. Unfortunately she has moved on from that duty.

 

BTW... "Cap’n Crunch only wears the bars of a Navy commander, not those of a captain."

"According to his official biography, Cap’n Crunch, whose full name is Horatio Magellan Crunch, was born on Crunch Island in the Sea of Milk – “a magical place with talking trees, crazy creatures and a whole mountain (Mt. Crunchmore) made out of Cap’n Crunch cereal.” ... He took command of the S.S. Guppy and spent decades battling his arch-nemesis, the pirate known as Jean LaFoote. The captain came to rule over a small empire of sugary cereals, from the original Cap’n Crunch to Mystery Volcano Crunch."

This and more from an entertaining WSJ article a wee time ago. [ From: U.S. Navy: No Record of Cap’n Crunch Service ]

 

Can anyone link to the details of the PCGS offer, either what it was, or if it even remains a valid one?

 

Here are some pics of spotted ASEs. The bottom one shows that they need not be round.
The tea colored spotting leads me to believe that there is more than one type of spotting issue.

 

Heritage had a Proof ASE as part of a 1995-W Proof Set in a 2011 auction (1154, Lot 6115), which they described as, "elongated milk spots". We can notice a spot at about 3h spread across the rim and where on the field continued in more or less rounded fashion.

 

Here is a link to where it was mentioned. http://forums.collectors.com/messageview.cfm?catid=26&threadid=627051&highlight_key=y&keyword1=milk%20spots

 

Something of this nature ought to be recorded on the PCGS website or in an archived article on their site, especially given an offer of reward money at one time. I'd like to see something more official than paraphrased forum messages of what was essentially marketing speak from an industry publisher that's anything but objective in its journalism, referring to the Coin World interview they make mention of. That article seems to date from about the time PCGS also began excluding the spots from its guarantee.

 

Straight from the horse's [HOMERUNHALL] mouth about halfway down page 2. I believe they took another 3 years or so after that to remove the spotting from guarantee coverage.

http://forums.collectors.com/messageview.cfm?catid=26&threadid=621496&STARTPAGE=2

 

The 2014s and 2015s seem to be pretty nice. Anyone notice any problems with coins from these years?

 

That's nice, but it still doesn't define what, if any, terms and conditions have to be met in order to secure the much ballyhooed reward monies from the company or the individual to suggested the reward is to be paid.

They don't seem to have defined what is or what isn't a milk spot any more than people in any forum have said what is or isn't a milk spot. The grading service also hasn't laid out any official terms of what is acceptable in terms of removal and conservation that would render a coin back to market acceptable condition, even IF the marks could be remedied, or somehow lessened to improve on negative eye-appeal to eventually earn a coin the graders' guarantee again. With nothing to go on, the reward offer isn't much of an incentive. The horse can say anything he wants to but he may or may not speak when we get him on stage in front of a crowd.

I still ask, is there nothing officially stated? Is there no archived press-release with some set of standards by which someone looking for a solution to the problem can go by, and for that matter stands to hold the company to such a boast? Without this, all the emphatic on this issue so certain they know what is or is not a milk spot have absolutely NO platform from which to dictate to others what constitutes this condition, least of all that 'shape' or lack thereof a certain type of mark or shape, is or isn't a milk spot.

 

All I am doing is relaying here what I have been told by numerous dealers who have repeatedly insisted that WHILE THERE ARE MANY KINDS OF POTENTIAL CONTAMINATION, the phenomenon known as "milk spots" are unique in two ways: 1) no chemical attempt to remove them has thus far been successful, and 2) they are nearly always pretty close to round.

Now, I suppose if you find a contaminent that meets 1 but not 2, you MAY be dealing with a variant of the same cause. I don't know why this is so, but it is (I checked last night) - I own about 70-90 or so ASE's, only 2 in slabs (Christmas gifts), and of the ones I checked last night, not a single one has any milk spots or any other garbage on them. Some in Danscos, some in Saflips in a 2x2 file box, and the proofs in OGP. I don't get it. One reason I may not is that I didn't buy many at all during the 09-11 silver craze, just enough to keep my sets whole. I notice that a lot of pieces of that era have spots. I also own ZERO "First Strike" or "Early Strike" examples, nor have I followed a pallet full of monster boxes being pushed along the F.U.N. Show bourse floor like a tomcat following a female in heat like I've observed some doing. (What a spectacle!)

Now, as to the chemistry: two thoughts, one I know, and one I only suspect. 1) Silver chloride is photoreactive, i.e., its chemistry alters on exposure to light, especially bright light over time. Normally, this occurs as a latent image that is subsequently developed in a darkroom. Silver chloride lies at the heart of the old warm-tone photographic papers such as Kodak's Portra and Agfa's magnificent Portriga-Rapid. That MAY account for the browning of the milk spots on that ASE.
2) The universe's most insistent coupler to Chlorine is Sodium. I suspect that a bath in HOT salt water would at least alter milk spots in a noticeable way if they are indeed silver chloride. But then again, so would a photographic developer. How do you feel about black milk spots? OTOH, a bath in Sodium Thiosulfate, the primary ingredient in photographic Fixer might remove the spots. Silver "wants" the thiosulfate, and sodium "wants" the chlorine. The spot MAY simply dissolve.

Almost makes me wish I had a milk spotted coin so I could play with it. Almost.

 

I have indirectly bumped into this phenomenon. Can someone send me a RAW sample for SEM/EDS verification.

It's "UNQUESTIONABLY" from the planchet preparation/cleaning process of raw blanks prior to striking. Its not a PMD atmosphere pheomenon with sulfur or chlorine and not an alloy impurity phenomenon.

John Lorenzo
Numismatist
United States
Co-Author GNL Book on 8 Reales

 

Well, you could solicit on the PCGS or NGC message/BST boards to buy a couple spotted ones like like I did. The pics were posted earlier. I can tell you already that sodium thiosulfate won't work, nor will ammonia solution. Sulfuric acid is ineffective as well. Ezest will work if you dip BEFORE the spots become visible. That was the dip that Russ was referring to in the linked thread. Acetone won't work either.

It has been said that the incipient spots can be seen with use of a halogen flashlight BEFORE they become visible to the eye. At that point it is sill possible to remove them. I never really looked into this much.

Under high magnification, the spots tend to be found on areas of the coin surface that have the roughest finish. I don't have photos of those, but here is a SEM scanning electron microscope micrograph of a silver eagle coin.



Interesting comment/s about silver chloride. I hadn't considered that as the cause for the tea colored spot. The spot on the one coin that I had examined by ESCA was white. FWIW, there was NO SODIUM present in the white spot, just silver and chlorine.

The following linked webpage has similar observations about AgCl and why it might be so hard to dissolve.


http://www.saltlakemetals.com/Solubility_of_Silver_Chloride.htm