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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;catadc, post: 3978934, member: 103515&quot;]Summary - If you want it cleaned, find a professional cleaning service (I am not aware of one, but I do not have byzantines individually worth more than 50 EUR, nor unique). Do not try to clean it yourself. Best, have the professional appraise the coin and recommend a full cleaning or a cosmetic cleaning.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now the detailed answer:</p><p><br /></p><p>To clean or not - I do not like the desert patina, so I am subjective in my answer. I prefer to clean it off, even if this will lower the aesthetics of the coins, but I prefer the unmasked truth. </p><p><br /></p><p>Bronze disease can hide under the dirt. Like this one (fine, this is an extreme case, but you get the idea).</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1047301[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>Once I got the dirt off and rinsed the coin in distilled water, I noted that there was actually no patina on the high areas (head, ear, shoulder), but the coin was simply dirty, making it look like a patina. Moreover, the coin had numerous small holes (pores) under the dirt on all the surface, not only where the bd has erupted. If the bd will ever be treated, the coin could benefit of a new dirt patina, to hide the scars. Will I ever apply it? Probably not.</p><p><br /></p><p>So, the cosmetic effect - the dirt hides not only the ugly scars, but also sometimes masks a lack of relief and improves the visibility of various elements, inducing the idea that the coin has good details and will look better if the desert patina is removed. Sometimes it will not. It will just show a shallow relief, with almost no contrast once the dirt is removed.</p><p><br /></p><p>And last, it keeps an unstable patina in place. Happened that letters &amp; details faded after using a soft brush (do not try a metal brush on byzantines, not even the soft brass one). </p><p><br /></p><p>I cleaned a few hundred late romans (mostly originating from the Balcans) and a few tens of byzantines during the last couple of years. They are different in metal composition, in origin (soil their were buried), patinates differently and react differently to cleaning. Moreover, the byzantines are different in metal composition. I found that tetarterons with some silver responded better to cleaning than pure copper, and generally smaller coins responded better than large ones.</p><p><br /></p><p>From the picture, it seems that the dirt on your coin is thick and there is some chipping of the dirt and even patina. You could find all of the above - some small bd points, unstable patina (mostly close to chipping areas), shallow or no details. Up to you to take the risk of uncovering any of these. If you do not, you cannot know if any is there anyway. Given the rarity of the coin, I have serious doubts to clean it myself and I would prefer a cleaner experienced in byzantines. </p><p><br /></p><p>Last, one exemple of what &quot;professionals&quot; chose to do: scratch the sh*t off, lacquer it, sell it. So choose wisely.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1047314[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1047315[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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