These war era iron German coins usually look pretty bad. Normally very dark, rusty, poor details. But these two I picked up are very shiny with good details, especially on the 1919. The group of coins I bought them from had a lot of cleaned coins in it, but they weren't all cleaned either. So I'm wondering if you think these two are cleaned, the 1916 and 1919. I'm including a separate 1917 for comparison. I'm not sure how they'd be cleaned if they were though.
I don't know for sure. Like you, I don't know how they would've been cleaned if they were. Perhaps they weren't, and they just didn't turn as dark as the third coin (and most others) normally did.
I sometimes use iron castings in my woodworking projects. I get them from several bulk dealers & they usually have been sitting around for awhile & have accumulated dirt, oil & rust. I clean them with naval jelly & they turn out spanking clean, but they always have a patina that looks exactly like those coins. So, maybe...
They do look cleaned to me, simply based on age, wear, and lack of any evidence of corrosion or circulation gunk.
Just because they look abnormally good doesn't mean they must be cleaned. There will always be some that were set aside and fortuitously escaped oxidation damage. The 1916 for example has a couple of oxidation(?) marks to both sides - on the 1 o and at 3 o'clock. Attached is an iron pattern from 1911 which is brilliant and hasn't been cleaned. Sure a pattern is almost ensured careful treatment unlike a circulating coin, but it has still lived in the same atmosphere for over 100 years, yet shows no corrosion.
The surfaces on the center coin do not look original. I didn’t explain well, but it’s not because it looks “abnormally good” but because it looks abnormal.
Wow, that’s an awesome pattern, and a good example of how some iron coins could survive white and bright over a century.
I think both are cleaned. The first coin is zinc-clad iron and the second is zinc. Neither should be that gray at that level of circulation and age. The third coin looks good.
