Proper acetone procedure

No need for that, I produced a thick layer of BTZ. As you can see, the signals are barely above noise:

 

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.....unless it's a high value coin and they suspect foul play.

 

No analytical chemist in their right mind would say "yup, that's BZT". See the sample FTIR spectrum I posted. The S/N is very low and and not enough bands are detected.

The Sniffer is actually a pretty crude instrument reliant on reflection of the signal to the detector. This GREATLY reduces the sensitivity of the instrument. Very thin surface layers and materials with weak absorbance will not be detected by it. When I first saw the video I have to laugh since they had a bottle of my original product sitting in plain view. If they used it in the demo, NOTHING would have been detected....the demo was definitely staged.

 

LOL!! You are correct, just look at the resolution yours has, it nicely separates the bands. I bet the sensitive is MUCH higher also!!

FTIR, ATR, Raman spectroscopy and Surface-Enhanced Raman spectroscopy has advanced so much with laser technology since those 30+ years. Even so, the CuBTA it was detected with that "primitive" equipment.

Thanks!

 

But like I said above, FTIR, ATR, Raman spectroscopy and Surface-Enhanced Raman spectroscopy have advanced so much with better optics, higher resolution diffraction grating, laser technology and computers since those 30+ years.

I saw that video, I also thought it was staged. However, what got my attention was how the lady was handling the coin, with her bare hands! I was
dismayed/horrified when I saw that on the video. Maybe that is why slabbed coins get toned over the years. I know I got the lady at PCGS quite upset when I stop her before she pulled out my first coin out of the 2x2 mylar flip to put it into PCGS's flips with her bare hands. Grrrr....

 

A scan of human sweat and oil, inc. urea and acetone would really mess up someone's grade.

 

Click "Expand" to see my comments in red.

 

ALL graders handle the coins with their bare hands. The risk of dropping the coin greatly outweighs the chance of marking a coin.

 

News Flash! That's how it is done. What is really weird is seeing folks handling coins with gloves.

Edit: At one time I did business with a blind collector. He collected large, ancients - the higher the relief the better - because he could fondle his collection without doing any harm!

 

I have two Alexander Tets, I love handing them to people and see the look on their faces to be handling these without gloves.

 

Thanks Doug...I will give it a try...

 

I use a photographers squeeze bub to blow dust out of my capsules or coins.

 

NO NO NO Distilled water only. NO reverse osmosis or boiled water!!!!

 

Welcome to CT. Let's talk about water...distilled water is probably the best, boiled water has one advantage of not having dissolved gases, reverse osmosis water has less dissolved salt, but plain tap water isn't that bad. I think the government limit for potable water is 500 ppm...that translates to 0.05% dissolved solids. Now you still don't want that dried on your coins, so, after rinsing them at the tap, pat them dry with a soft towel, no rubbing.

 

Wow, what a thread! I see it has been 9 months since the last post, but I hope some of the experienced coin collectors on this thread will still see my post and be able to offer me some guidance and suggestions on a BIG coin preservation project that I am about to undertake as a total newbie! Let's start with a few sample photos in my Google album for reference.

During my 40 years on the planet, I have mostly purchased new gold and silver coins, rounds, and bars for wealth preservation, so numismatics is a new area for me to explore. I did a lot of research over the past week because I had an opportunity to purchase a large coin collection (mostly circulated coins) from a woman who lost her husband many years ago and finally decided she was ready to let go of his belongings. The coin collection was an unexpected bonus, as we were just there to purchase some machinery from his woodshop!

Anyway, she had no interest in or knowledge of the collection, so she just wanted me to make her an offer. I took pictures of all the album pages and other individual pieces in the collection and put together a spreadsheet of values based almost exclusively on melt value because I was in no position to say whether or not any of the items in the collection had any numismatic value -- I could guess based on some information I found on the web, but those were still pure guesses. Additionally, some of the silver coins in the extremely old plastic album pages showed a greenish tint or residue and I had no idea what that would do to the value.

I ended up purchasing the collection at a discount from melt value (about what she would have received had a metals dealer been willing to purchase it from her: silver spot price less a typical fee charged by metals dealers). Now that the collection is mine I am able to more closely inspect the coins to look for damage or rare/special pieces -- there are over 800 coins in this collection so who knows what I may find in it!

Unfortunately, as I have been able to inspect the collection more closely at home in better lighting, I can see that a majority of the coins have some amount of greenish damage/residue, which I am assuming is PVC damage. This is seen on almost all of the silver coins in the old, disintegrating album pages (Mercury Dimes, Roosevelt Dimes, Standing Liberty Quarters, Washington Quarters, Walking Liberty Half Dollars, Ben Franklin Half Dollars, Kennedy Half Dollars, and a few Morgan Dollars and Peace Dollars). The Buffalo Nickels stored in similar pages appear free of this damage, but that would be expected since it is my understanding that nickel would not experience PVC damage as silver would.

I read through the discussion in the first 3-4 pages of this thread regarding cleaning PVC damage with 100% pure acetone and I appreciate all of that information so much. However, with a collection this size and so much of it showing what appears to be PVC damage, I am overwhelmed thinking of how to tackle the cleaning of each one of these coins!

Here is the basic process summed up: A shot glass for bath 1, bath 2, bath 3, one coin per bath/dip, coin will typically need to rest for 10 mins to 24 hours in the first bath, use wooden chopsticks to move it between baths (I'm not sticking my fingers into acetone over and over thousands of times and I saw no other good recommendations for a tool to use), maybe rinse with distilled water, maybe use a hair dryer on low to dry....and then repeat this process 600 times for all the coins that show this greenish residue!

If you have a handful of coins to treat for PVC damage, this process sounds fine, but let's be serious -- it could take me years to do it this way! Does anyone have any other suggestions for me on how I might speed up this process? Or perhaps a different approach I might be able to take to cut down the time for such a large batch of coins? I think I read early in this thread that an ultrasonic cleaner was a big no-no but I don't recall why.

Also, any other tips for me on handling the coins? Gloves or not? What about the coins which don't need a PVC bath, like the Buffalo Nickels? How should I physically handle those? I have both soft cotton gloves and latex-free nitrile gloves that I use to protect my hands when I paint or stain wood in our shop. Side note, I also have goggles and a mask to protect from VOCs when I paint or stain, so I could use these for the acetone project as well.

Next, my questions revolve around storage going forward. I already purchased (from Amazon) flexible album pages which contain no PVC and 2x2 coin flips which contain no PVC (the flips fit in the album pages). I want the collection to be protected, viewable, and also consolidated (if there was a fire, for example, I want to be able to grab the collection and get out), so an album seemed like a good choice rather than just a whole bunch of flips or "airtight" plastic coin cases which would not be very portable.

Does anyone have other storage suggestions for me or any words of caution about the storage materials that I purchased? We all know cheap goods come from China these days, so should I be worried about these items not being PVC-free as advertised and perhaps purchase from somewhere else (likely at a higher price)? I was able to purchase enough flips and album pages for those flips, plus a magnifying glass to help my aging eyes, for about $65, and I still need to purchase the albums themselves -- this seemed like a worthwhile expense to protect the collection, but if I need to spend more to be CERTAIN that the collection is protected, I'd like to know before I dive into these products and can no longer return them. Of course, when you add in the cost of all the acetone I'm going to need, the expenses really begin to add up fast.

I sincerely appreciate any advice the group can offer. I want to protect and preserve these amazing coins that have been rotting away in these old album pages for years, but I figured it was important to reach out to this group in case this is not PVC damage and I need to go down a different road entirely, or in case the expert opinion would be to leave these coins untreated and simply transfer them to new cases. Thank you!

 

With this many coins, you have a lot of work to do. The first step is to sort the coins and work with the coins with the most value. Use shot glasses with those and store them in new flips. With just the junk silver coins there are faster ways to clean them up. No need to use flips for coins worth just the silver value.

 

Just don't get confused. PVC as a man made substance itself doesn't cause problem, it because the coin world wants 'transparency' and 'flexible' storage and to do that chemicals called plasticizers have to be added, they can break down over time with moisture and heat to acid products and migrates to metal coins and cause problems. Many coin dealers ship coins in PVC flips for safety ( they don't scratch as much as stiff mylar in shipping movement) with a note to switch out when you receive the coin.
If you live in a desert like me, PVC has never caused me problems, but I have received coins I have bought that needed to be cleaned. If you have PVC sheets in an album, and they are stiff and hard, they probably gassed out a long time ago, but probably is still a good idea for a quick dip in acetone. If you were gloves , use latex and not nitrile, as nitrile is more soluble in acetone. Jim

 

What a nice coin find. And you probably paid her more than a coin dealer would have. My experience with Acetone is that it's relatively harmless on silver coins. I have kept some 200 year old silver coins in Acetone for a month or more and with no adverse effects. However, do buy the pure Acetone and not the stuff they sell for nail polish removal.

 

I'm not sure if there could have been issues with viewing my Google album with sample images of the apparent PVC damage, so here they are in a local site album: https://www.cointalk.com/media/albums/pvc-damage.1498/

Yes, it is a big project! I was thinking of possibly beginning by just getting all the coins out of the current sheets. The sheets are extremely old, brittle, and falling apart, and if they do contain PVC it seemed wise to start by just getting the coins out of those sheets and into new, structurally sound sheets without PVC, and then going from there.

The trouble with trying to start with the most valuable coins first is that I am a total newbie to this and I have no idea which, if any, might hold a higher value than melt. You mentioned leaving the "junk silver" for last, but I'd venture to say that most of what is in the sheets is, in fact, junk silver. Perhaps there could be some low mintage coins that could make them worth more, but that just means researching each coin one by one and still doesn't really give me a good place to begin.

The collection does contain a few very old coins, one from the 1700s, an maybe 10 or so from the 1800s -- should I just consider those to the be higher value ones due to age? Or what about Mercury Dimes? I have a couple hundred of those in the collection, almost all in these disintegrating sheets, but I think in general they are just worth melt value except for some special cases.

As I type this, I am beginning to wonder if I should create a list of the "special" coins in each category that I have (list of "special" Mercury Dimes, Morgan Dollars, etc.), then review the collection to search for any of those special items, process/protect those first, then determine what to do with the rest which may all be considered junk silver even in spite of being incredibly old in some cases. One caveat to this process is that perhaps I should practice the acetone process on some junk coins before working on any special ones that I identify -- wouldn't want my novice abilities causing issues as I learn by trial and error.