They don't retain their luster. Every time you dip a coin, regardless of the expertise, you lose some luster, and also some of the metal. that tarnish is a metal oxide. CHEMICALLY speaking, you can reduce it which chemically removes the oxygen from the coin. Don't try it. That will surely destroy the coins finish. Or you can dip it which in effect removes a very small layer of the coins surface, and hence some of the luster. Ruben
Andy - Here are the pics of the nickel. As you can see from the obverse, some "tarnish" remains. As mentioned, I haven't dipped for more than 10 secs because of the very reasons that Ruben mentioned. Looks a heck of a lot better than it did before. Wish I was able to take before and after photos.
They are there. You can see the lines vaguely in the pics, but thats the best I can do considering the limitations of the camera. They are strong, except for the far left side of the coin where you can see that they blend together slightly. Technically, probably wouldn't be considered Full Stairs because of that, but looking through a 16x loupe you can make out the separate lines ever so slightly in that part of the coin as well. I will try to take better pics and post them if I can.
Nope - no luck. When I zoom the camera in that low it gets all blury. I tried several different angles and couldn't focus in on the steps. I have only had the camera for oh, about 4 hrs - and two of those were spent reading the book. Give me time - I will figure a way to get them. Thanks for looking though.
That coin looks great! I'm definitely going to look into dipping some of the low value silver coins that I have. I was looking at online coin supply shops and there seems to be a lot of choices out there for coin cleaning. For something that is so unpopular amongst the experts it seems to be quite popular with the masses.
