Sour puss Caracalla (lemon juice tips)

Hey all, just got this Caracalla denarius delivered earlier today. I bought it with the intent of doing something to remove the crud on it. My plan is to start with lemon juice, as I've seen it mentioned for similarly crusted silvers, but would love some guidance... I've done a search on the forum and see one person said a water and lemon juice mix, others straight up, also I'm not sure for how long, like overnight or a couple hours?

Here's the coin:


Thank you in advance!
Justin

 

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Lemon juice is an acid and will eat away at your coin, except it should eat away at the non-silver a lot faster than silver. But like any acid, I wouldn't leave a coin in it longer than necessary. Short dips of a few minutes to start, and get an idea of just how tough the crud is. Make sure you have something to neutralize the acid with after you are done.

 

Baking soda works, right?

 

It should

 

The primary reason not to expose a silver coin to lemon juice longer than necessary is leaching. Prolonged exposure will leach the impurities out of the silver (coins are not pure silver, and have copper mixed in) . Overexposure to acids will turn a coin porous and fragile, and ugly to boot. When cleaning ancients, it's always best to be conservative even if it takes longer. You only get one chance to do it right, and it's not like they are minting more of these coins as we speak.

 

haha - yep.. no pressure!
I have a couple that need work but I am afraid to try. Will watch this thread closely..

 

Golly! I love her just the way she is!!
next up: beautiful coin!!!
C: as you know, as my pops told me and as I will remind you...however much dirt you remove with an acid equals the amount you deteriorate the coin.
Like a beautiful woman, start slow with her, brother. Might I recommend starting, if you must, with some light soap and a shaved down toothbrush with warm water...and then if needed a week long soak in olive oil?

 

Shaved toothbrush is also tricky...can be done, but best practice on a modern throwaway coin first to make sure you are doing it right.

Something like this one...a modern coin that no one will miss.



Can't wait to hear from US collectors as to my pick for a throwaway coin.

The first step though should always be olive oil and/or distilled water ....as a matter of fact, distilled water is the gentlest thing you can do.

If none of those work, and the coin is mostly silver, pure acetone is also very safe.

If none of that works, then you experiment with acids and manual scraping, etc.

 

So after about 4 cycles of 5-10 minutes in the juice and some manual work with a toothpick in between this is the result. The green stuff is all gone, and the hard brown stuff has shunk a little and gotten thinner. I'm happy with what it's done so far, so if it stays like this, I'm good. But I am going to put it in "the drink" (do people drink distilled water? ) for a number of days to see if it softens the brown.

 

Good, distilled water is an excellent next step. You are doing great work with that coin so far.

 

Thanks for the vote of confidence!

 

Lemon juice is a weak acid and has some other properties that help in removing crud. The localized spots that you have left could possibly be treated with drops of lemon juice that you can let stay on for short periods of time and then rinse off. The sodium bicarbonate will help to neutralize any remaining acid. Just be careful to rinse thoroughly.

 

Starting to clean up there - nice!

 

First you have to place it on a half shell (I prefer Blue Points), then squeeze juice from a fresh lemon (don't use the yellow plastic bottle shaped like a lemon, you want fresh squeezed). Swallow it whole (don't chew). Then check it out when it reappears...who knows, it could work. And you can enjoy some Blur Points, or other types of your choice!

 

If you can pick up some powdered citric acid you'll find it is very useful for cleaning, check the pickling section at your local grocery stores. The nice thing about it is that you can mix it to a similar concentration as lemon juice without all the other gunk that comes with actual lemon juice. I like using it for small spot cleaning of coins followed by a rinse in a solution of sodium bicarbonate to neutralize the acid and finally a quick distilled water rinse.

Nice progress so far though!

 

The dissolved minerals in regular water is good for you & adds minerals to your body. Drinking distilled water (which has had the dissolved minerals removed) is supposed to be bad for your body as it will remove those minerals from your body. Not a doctor, just as I recollect from reading this somewhere.

 

Nope. No lemon juice to hide the taste. And I chew ‘em up so I can enjoy them. Why eat Blue Points if you have to hide ‘em in yer belly without tasting them? Lovem.

 

OK, I agree, just try not to chip a tooth on a coin or a pearl!