To clean or not to clean? That is the question...

We can't know for sure, but my own gut feel (for whatever that's worth) is that there's a very nice coin underneath all that obscuring dirt. If it were mine I would send it for cleaning and quite like my chances.

 

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I'd partially clean it as well

 

I know many rare coins are brought to auction with deposits on them. Slabbed coins are faulted for having been improperly cleaned, so I would either leave it, or have it done by an expert. I recently saw a hoard of Celtic AV Staters with soil deposits, found by a metal detectorist/ they were catalogued/ and professionally "restored" end result/ the coins looked better, and suffered no ill effects from being properly cleaned.
John

 

Agree 100%. To me, it's a no brainer: if you're confident that you have a skilled professional, let him/her clean it.

 

I got the coin in yesterday and, with some guidance from my coin cleaning friend, decided to try my hand at very gently cleaning it. So far I've just used DW soaks and rubbing it between my fingers. Will likely get some bamboo skewers or toothpicks to try and slowly clean out the details but it's going well so far.

Before:


Now:

 

I'm generally not in favor of cleaning except by those far more skilled than I....but it seems to be progressing well with the 'gentle' method and I'm dying to see how it turns out. Best of luck red!!!

 

Thanks. I agree I'm generally the last person to clean coins myself but in this case I'm getting a lot of suggestions from my friend who cleaned the previous victoriatus for me and I probably won't do anything more than the gentle cleaning method I'm currently using. If it seems like it will need more than that, or if I find any signs of active corrosion under the dirt, I'll be sending it his way but so far he thinks this one might well clean up just with DW and bamboo skewers.

 

It seems to be progressing nicely! Is your friend against using lemon juice (pure or diluted) in this case?

 

He has suggested against it due to the debased nature of victoriati.

 

Probably wise.

 

I just received a bulk lot of Judaean bronze coins that are not thoroughly cleaned. They're fairly clean but they feel gritty and particles of dry earth come off of them into my hand when I hold them. Should I swish them around in distilled water? Should they be soaked in olive oil? Thanks for your advice, Panzerman and forum members!

 

Lookin good so far @red_spork

 

I honestly cannot see how soaking them in water (distilled or otherwise) can hurt them. If you do use tap water, a distilled water rinse wouldn't hurt.

 

I cringe at how easily you guys jump to lemon juice. It is an acid. Lemon juice should always be a last resort.

First distilled water, then some acetone and/or amonia, and lemon juice as a last resort when all else fails.

You should never start any cleaning process with an acid, not when much gentler means might work.

 

I'm going to be putting them into flips and handing them out to folks at my church. They're not bad the way they are. They just feel a little dusty (desert dust I presume). You know what? I'm going to leave the desert dust on them. Thanks, Kentucky!

 

The only thing I would have against that is that any dust on the inside of the flip would 1) detract from the focus on the coin and 2) potentially be a source of grit to scratch the coin. I repeat, a water rinse can't hurt.

 

I'm not a huge fan of the cleaned version ... but I never attempt or think about cleaning my coins (I like old grunge)

=> oh, but it's still a sweet coin, before an after



red_spork => congrats again on scoring that wonderful Victoriatus

 

I have never cleaned any of my coins (@YOC cleaned one of mine). I am like @stevex6 , I LIKE the grunge, etc. Brings character to the coin!

 

Thanks, Kentucky! I guess I need to do it. I'll keep you all posted.

 

Another cleaning update, just a couple quick cell phone pics. I've hit a bit of a wall with this coin. The dirt is gone but underneath it was some sort of brown gunk in spots and it ain't moving, at least not with any techniques I'm comfortable with using, so I've paused the cleaning for now, pending further suggestions from my friend who was helping me clean it. If this is where it ends I'd be OK as this was a cheapo and a coin I'm happy to have any example of at all.

Since this may be the end of the saga, I might as well leave with some info on the historical significance of the type and why I was willing to take a chance to get an example of it. This victoriatus comes from the Crawford 90 series - a Second Punic War-era issue that includes the victoriatus shown here as well as an exceedingly rare and possibly unique double victoriatus linked by obverse style to the victoriatus shown here. While there is very little hoard evidence to go by, the presence of a single example(at the time, only the third known) of this type in the "Early Victoriati Hoard" published by Crawford does seem to confirm that the type is one of the earlier victoriati and as discussed earlier in the thread, Friedman and Schaefer found die links that link this victoriatus issue to the VB issue shown by @Sallent which includes another interesting denomination: the half victoriatus.

Taken together, the die links, the hoard evidence suggesting an early origin and the fact that two irregular denominations(the double and half victoriati) can be associated with the type leads me to believe that this issue, along with the Crawford 95 VB, are likely the result of an early experiment which saw the double-victoriatus and half-victoriatus denominations abandoned. I think that given the die links, the two issues should not be separated as Crawford has done but should instead be considered part of the same issue from a single, likely moving, field mint with the fully-anonymous coins coming first and the signed VB issues coming last. As far as why there would be both signed issues and fully anonymous types in the same series, if the phenomenon was localized to a single issue I might think it was the result of simply an engraver's error. The fact that it happens with so many early issues and the fact that the hoard linked above contains so many issues of anonymous types like the one below that can be linked to signed issues but that the reality of the market suggests that the signed issues are now much more common makes me think that the fully-anonymous types largely came first and that some event, possibly some sort of misappropriation of dies or of bullion, was the impetus for the moved to signed types that could be easily and quickly traced to a particular field mint, should for instance official dies be used to make fourees.