I cleaned a coin

Hard to believe that baking soda and water and just soaking could do that much. I can't see why it would be considered "ruined" or "unpleasant", but to each his own.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I like the first photo better. Hard to say what it looked like in hand. I think the first photo was trying to capture the surface at the expense of color...

 

I have to chuckle. Had @Orfew NOT shown the coin as a cleaned Before-and-After, and just shown the cleaned coin, everyone would comment how great the coin is...

 

Yeah, sorry to be a downer this time. I'm usually full of compliments for everyone here, but I just can't this time. Maybe I should not have posted anything in the first place. I really think, based on both images, that the coin looked a lot better toned.

But then again, I'll admit I'm biased as I really love dark and old toning on coins...especially ancients. Still, either way it is still a decent coin @Orfew . Having no Claudian silver, if someone offered me that coin (even now all shinny) I'd still be happy to have it in my collection. But I still wish you had left it as is. Hopefully it will get some nice cabinet toning soon.

 

do you mind if I ask what this is?

 

It's a silver coin. Now it looks MORE like a silver coin than before, but without chewing up the surface. Nothing appears to have suffered from the process. I call that progress. I can't imagine why anyone would say the darkened version was better. When the Elgin marbles were covered with smog debris, I think they did the right thing then too - but many did not agree. Some folks have austere ideas about authenticity.

After viewing this I take back my comment about the Elgin marbles. But this is NOT what happened to that coin:

 

The OP coin wasn't truly toned at all before cleaning, so much as it was simply dirty.

 

Me either. I like the cleaned version much better.

 

The CLEANED version is the look of the ORIGINAL coin when it was being circulated: SILVER.

 

This mirrors my opinion as well.

If the uncleaned coin had simply a silver tarnish (AgS), then I would understand how some collectors would prefer the "toned" version. But that's not what was covering this coin's surface -- it was dirt, not toning or a patina. Dirt isn't part of the coin's natural surface, by any reasonable definition of "natural surface." My collecting preference is very much in favor of the cleaned coin.

 

Yeah, baking soda dissolved in water won't remove any toning. The coin was just dirty. I bet plain water would have done the same.

 

I like both versions but that red background makes the clean style POP.