For rare coins, I only hold them with gloves now. In my experience, holding them from the rim is risky. They could fall, and even holding them by the rim could damage them. For common-dates, I just use my washed hands. A common-date Morgan is not going to decrease in value much through holding.
The ONLY time, I may handle a coin is when I take out of the auction flip and carefully place it in a safeflip....ideal for longer storage. For this procedure I have, "special coin handling gloves". Probably safest bet. The less a coin is handled,the better it is. I once took an uncirculated 1630 AV Mohur from Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan I to my local coin club meeting, for "show and tell". I was shocked when one of the members asked, if he could feel the coin in between his fingers....my answer a polite NO! For silver/ copper even worse, since these metals oxidize/tarnish easily.
So is the consensus is that holding coins by the rim or a jewelers cloth won't destroy the value, I'm worried if I take coins out of the www.goldeneaglecoins.com flip they'll be worthless? Help please...
I bought a 1972 Royal Mint Silver Crown minted in honor of Elizabeth II's marriage to Prince Phillip. At that time the mint didn't store proof coins in plastic capsules but used something akin to cellophane. There was an opening in the bottom seam when I got it so I put Scotch tape to seal it back. The coin looks as good as it did when I received it-no marks of any kind. Only 100,000 of these silver Crowns were issued and only sold in Britain.
One should never handle any coin, unless wearing special coin handling gloves. Coins are best preserved by looking/ not touching them. Example, my AV Ruspone 1781/ Tuscany/Florence Mint/ Pietro Leopoldo of Austria....was never handled/as perfect as when it was minted in 1781.
That's fine. Gloves are a mistake when it comes to handling coins. You lose a ton of dexterity and they can easily be dropped. A coin can be properly handled without damaging it and without gloves.
Let me explain.... I like to look at my coins all the time, they are all housed in saflips/ in Lighthouse albums. Of course, I have some modern proof sets housed in presentation boxes too. All of my coins are from auctions, so when I get one that is not in a "saflip", I wear "coin handling gloves" and carefully remove coin from auction flip/ transfer it to a saflip. Then, I remove auction data tag and slip it into saflip(not the one housing coin) After that it goes into one of my Lighthouse albums. 95 percent of my 1100 or so AV/AR coins are "mintstate" so I want them to remain so. I have seen many modern proof coins with fingerprints/ quality down from MS-70 to MS 65 or lower. 70 percent of my coll. are gold, which is not as sensitive to toning/marks as silver. I also have 115 AV coins housed in slabs, which do a great job of protecting them from harm. As to how some coins can remain flawless after hundreds of years and longer....thank God there were nice people back then that carefully preserved them in their collection! Here is my Imperial Rome AV Aureus 286AD Rome Mint Emperor Diocletianus FDC
+1. I am a dentist and use nitrile gloves exclusively in my practice. I figure if they’re good enough to protect me from a patient’s saliva and blood, and to protect a patient from my bacteria, they must be good for protecting coins from my greasy finger prints. Plus, as mentioned, they are comfortable, have good tactile feedback and relatively inexpensive. Obviously, even with gloves on, I’m careful not to handle a coin roughly, especially the more delicate and pristine ones.
...That being said, I try to rarely handle the coins, even with gloves, and only do so to put them into protective capsules or flips. I wanted to get that in there before I got flamed...lol