Uh oh! I cleaned a popular coin!

You too Martin

 

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The problem is that none of these coins are pure silver. RR coins are around 97% pure silver, but as the empire rolled in the quantity of silver continued to decline steadily.

 

True, but again, the low acidity of lemon juice makes its reactivity with trace metals in the silver very low as well. Not impossible, but not likely to be harmful or corrosive. At least according to what I read on the Internet.

 

Looks like we'll need @Ancientnoob or @BadThad here.

 

Here, go nuts.

http://www.metaldetectingworld.com/cleaning_coin_p16_silver.shtml

No chemistry lessons from me today.

btw VK and Martin...nice job

 

very good job cleaning! VK & martin.

 

I think it came out great and the method has the Ancientnoob seal of approval!

 

Well, I'm inspired. Guess who is taking a 70/30 lemon juice bath?

 

Awesome work @ValiantKnight ! Wow, I never clean (but I rarely get uncleaned coins). However, if I get some, I want your recipe! NICE! Very impressive results!

 

Try acetone first. It might work

 

Thanks all for the compliments!

Just what I needed to hear, thanks Nathan!

 

Incredible cleaning job! Well done! I've used lemon juice many times cleaning silver coins, never had it "eat into" any of them. If you get the timing right, it doesn't even remove the patina of the coin. I think the worry is overstated as is evidenced by the OP coin.

 

Even though the end result was great, there was still a bit of a bump in the road. While the reverse was still mostly covered with the gunk during the lemon juice soak, a couple of tiny breaks opened up revealing bits of the coin surface underneath. Tried to avoid spots like those while brushing it with one of those mini dental brush things (with nylon bristles) but ended up accidentally lightly scratching one of those exposed areas (circled in red). Nothing serious just glints like a star at night when you angle it towards the light; just kind of wish it wasn't almost in the middle of the field (unlike other spots like it at the edges of the devices which I'm pretty sure weren't caused by me). Was hoping the ammonia would darken that spot but it still glints. Does it look distracting to you guys? Any way to to darken just that one spot?

 

You could dab it with a liver of sulphur mix on a q-tip which will tone it. it may or may not match the toning around it but if you just touch it for a second with a tiny bit it would probably do the trick.

 

Truly good work and great result.

 

Nice job

 

That does not even look like the same coin!

 

Impressive cleaning job! Wow!

 

Silver is fine. Copper isn't, and will get eaten up by lemon juice. Up until the time of Nero, the silver in the coins was pure enough that you can probably clean them with lemon juice without causing any damage. But Nero started debasing the silver in his coins, and the silver content was reduced several times after that. By the time you get to Septimius Severus, the silver content of a denarius was just above 80%, and down to around 55% by the end of his reign. So you need to be very careful using anything acidic on Severan-era denarii.

Besides ammonia, which I haven't tried before but plan to test, has anyone ever using the method of placing aluminum foil on the bottom of a glass container, adding a silver coin, placing more foil above the coin and then filling the container with a hot solution of water and sodium carbonate?

 

Is lemon juice only for silver coins? Even under magnification there was no damage to the coin from the soaks. I did one more treatment of lemon juice after this picture was taken and it got rid of the rest of the corrosion. It will also remove the patina but there was no real patina on this one to start with.

The bottom line is that cleaning is an art and each coin needs to be evaluated on a case by case basis.