Tried acetone any other ideas?

OK, Doug. But this is all I want to know, what did you do to it? Let me be the judge on whether that's "acceptable" or not.

You're right. A seller doesn't know what may have happened to the coin in the chain-of-custody. What did you do to the coin? Tell me what you know. That's all.

Let me again restate the issue, if he doesn't tell. He decides where the line is between acceptable conservation and unacceptable cleaning, and he doesn't let me decide it. Where is that line? Survey 1000 different people, and it's in 1000 different places. If it's a Brillo Pad, we agree. What if it's @BadThad's proprietary formula? PCGS was taking our submission fees and giving those coins the "Genuine" back in the days, not that long ago, when JA, they, and a few others I'll call them weasels were outright manufacturing the hysteria on the coin doctors around every corner, and we were scared out of our wits to buy a coin for it, that wasn't in a PCGS holder.

Just tell me what you did. You don't, I find out, we're over. That's the only ethical way, because the line is different, from one person to the next. To illustrate even further, there was a dealer, here, and he was in PCGS and NGC, too, who toned five coins with the sulfur from wooden match sticks, and five for five graded. PCGS graded them. Is that "acceptable?" Five for five. He batted 1.000 with David Hall and his $100,000-a-year coin graders at the Professional Coin Grading Service. Seems that's pretty strong evidence that practice is acceptable. This dealer is going to tell me what he did to those coins. If I rather have to find that out, myself, it's the last coin he sells to me.

Having said all that, I'd buy a coin from you or Insider in a heartbeat, because I'm confident, while we disagree on some of these finer ethical points, you two are going to answer my questions. You may think I'm all whacked-up for them, but I'm confident you're going to answer them. And maybe I am all whacked-up for them. But then, understand this. That's just the way I am, and there's nothing that anybody can do about it.

 

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Ive found that Ammonia is great at cleaning minor blemishes and finger prints on silver. That gunk you've got on there probably wont come off with Ammonia.

 

Not sure if I ever said this before, but "If you can't tell if it has been cleaned...it hasn't been cleaned." With that said, I think we have here (excluding me) some VERY knowledgeable coin enthusists including dealers, hoarders and others, and I have seen repeatedly when it has been asked "has this coin been cleaned" there are a variety of answers.

 

I plead the (a) fifth.............

 

Most marvelous repartee dear fellows.........

 

I have seen some interesting techniques to remove tarnish and other undesirables on silver coins.

One of them I tried with a British Trade Dollar with excellent results. Even though I've never even considered cleaning a coin, I had to find out if this one was minted in Calcutta or Bombay. So i did the experiment.

Here's how it goes:

Boil water, add baking soda and salt.
Meanwhile set up a glass Pyrex cooking cassarole dish (the kind of thing you'd make lasagna in) and line it with a few layers of aluminum foil.

After the water comes to a boil..... add the boiling water with the salt and baking soda in it to the Pyrex.

Place coin in hot water and watch your coin return to its untarnished state. Electrons from the tarnish should transfer into the aluminum foil.

There is a you tube video on this.

GOOD LUCK and please let us know how it goes.

 

I'll bet you don't know how close you've come to outlining an old time process.