Conservation service

I guess it all depends on the issues with the coin. Never having sent a coin out for professional conservation, I couldn't tell you. All I can do is post a link to NCS.

 

I think you can pretty safely bet that the conservation services use - distilled water, acetone, xylene, coin dip, alcohol, and without doubt some concoctions that they whip up themselves - to clean coins. And make no mistake, that's what they are doing - they are cleaning the coins.

And if you were in the business of doing that - cleaning/conserving coins - would you tell others how you are doing it ? Or would you say - it's a secret ? I guess that depends on if you want to stay in business or not.

 

Whether it works or not depends on each specific coin, and how you define "look better". Some coins they can make look better, other coins they can't. And some will in fact look worse, might even become ungradeable.

Ya see, when you clean a coin all kinds of things can happen. And it depends not only what you use and how you use it, but on the coin itself. For example, some coins if you clean them, you might make things visible that were not visible before you cleaned it. Things like an old cleaning that were covered up by whatever it was you were trying to remove to make the coin "look better". Or, if a coin is circulated, sometimes even a little bit, by cleaning it you can make it look downright weird, completely unnatural. And can anybody say that makes it better ? Most would say it makes it look worse. Other times you can clean a coin and turn a sows ear into the proverbial silk purse. Buy ya never know which way it will go until you do it !

That's the hard part - knowing which coins are candidates for cleaning and which ones are not. That's the part that it takes years, and experience, to learn. And even then ya get it wrong sometimes - everybody does, even the very best. But sometimes ya get it right too - and it is the successes that make it all worthwhile. There's a lot of successes, tens of millions of them ! But a lot of failures too.

Your specific coin, ehhh, it's kinda iffy. In my opinion anyway. It's definitely circulated, and it's toned and little dirty. Both the toning and the dirt can be safely removed, or just the dirt safely removed. But the big question is - would that be a good thing with this specific coin ? My opinion, not really.

Ya see, coins of that age, and that condition, well they're supposed to look like that. That's normal, that's natural. So cleaning it could, not necessarily would but definitely could, make it look unnatural - a little weird. But that's a subjective thing - kinda like chocolate and vanilla. You might like it, but nobody else would. Or some might and others might not. And that's just if ya clean dirt off. If you dipped it - it would REALLY look weird ! And the TPGs might even say it's was ungradeable then.

What I'm trying to tell ya is there's always a risk, it's always a gamble when you clean a coin. But could be done, safely - absolutely. Depending of course on how you define safely. If you define it by saying doing no additional harm to the coin - then yes. If you define it by saying "make it look better" - only the eyes of the beholder can judge that.

 

First of all - why ? I mean the coin is toned so the only thing they could possibly do is dip it to remove the toning. What do you hope to accomplish by doing that ? Why spend money messing around with this one, when you have no idea how it's going to turn out ? You have to pay them to dip it, then you also have to pay them to grade and slab it again.

If you want an untoned example, or higher grade example - simply go buy one and sell this one.

The secret with coins is really simple - don't buy coins you don't like, or coins you think you might be able to make look better. And don't buy coins that you hope to upgrade one day. That too is a waste of money. And if you can't afford the one you want, then save your money and wait until you can.

Only buy coins that you are happy with EXACTLY as they are when you buy them !

 

The only thing that can be done is to use chemicals to change the appearance of the coin. Water, acetone, xylene, alcohol - none of those have any effect at all on toning. That leaves coin dips of one kind or another. And all coin dips contain an acid of one kind or another, it is the acid that removes the toning. That's what they would do, if they did anything at all.

Ya see, you also have to understand that just because you send a coin in to them for cleaning/conservation - that doesn't mean they will actually do anything to the coin. Before doing anything, they examine the coin and make their best guess as to whether or not they should just leave it alone. If they think dipping will help it, maybe get an upgrade, then they'll dip it. Otherwise they'll just leave it alone. You'll still have to pay them though.