After you ordered yourd, how long before receiving? I'm still waiting on mine, ordered on the night you posted the thread. Yours is cleaning up nicely. The gunk may come off with acetone, and ammonia might take care of the rest, but yeah, let your friend do it.
Mine took 12 days from order to delivery and tracking was useless unfortunately. I had no idea where it was until it was in my mailbox.
1. IMO, acetone is not going to remove the stains. 2. IMO, Anyone asking how to clean a coin should probably not touch it in the first place.
This is how this coin ended up after a very quick(like 3 minutes) treatment using electrolytic reduction with a very dilute solution of citric acid(half lemon juice half boiling water) and a piece of aluminum foil once I was sure the dirt was fully removed. I like how it turned out and the remaining grime gives a nice contrast.
You did well. Looks great. Personally, I would go no further... the grime adds nice contrast. However, I am by NO means an expert. It is a gorgeous little coin.
Don't worry, I'm not planning to. The grime that remains appears to be iron oxide so it shouldn't hurt the coin in any way and any further acid treatment would probably strip the toning if I left it long enough to remove all the oxide so this one is done for good.
red_spork => congrats on knocking-off all of the big-stuff ... Man, I "love" the before and the after ... => yup, you can't lose with a sweet coin like that, eh? Cheers, coin-bro!
i would not clean it, i like to see the dirt on it, and dirt thosent destroy the coin give more reseaons, that is realy comes out the ground
Mine before: Mine After: Of course, mine was nowhere near as dirty as red_spork's, so the decision to leave as is was easy.
Nice coin for me, those silver need realy perfect i like spores of lives and not so stupid white/ i wish i had more sand dirt coins silver you can see realy it comes out the ground