Carbon spots

PLEASE - do yourself a favor and practice - A LOT - with some coins you don't care about before you ever use it on any coin you do care about ! And do numerous experiments with how much you dilute it, and only dilute it with distilled water !

Leave it on 1 second too long - and it's already too late - the coin will be permanently damaged !

And for what it's worth, if it were me, I'd dip the whole coin, I wouldn't mess around with Q-Tips. Of course only after making sure that you have the experience necessary and are sure you can safely use coin dip without damaging the coin.

Also be aware that once you do remove the spots, the coin may have already been damaged before you even started trying to remove them.

edit - when you're practicing, don't use any copper coins. Practice on silver only.

 

A couple of reasons. You can hairline a coin with a Q-tip, even without using dip ! And with dip, it's a lot easier to do it ! And two, because you're simply not able to control exactly where the dip gets and everyplace it touches the coin it's gonna change the color - that's a given. So even if ya get the dark spots off - and most times ya won't - you're gonna end with a coin that has lighter colored areas than the rest of the coin. Making it look even worse in the eyes of some than it was to begin with.

Bear in mind that even by dipping the whole coin there's no telling what you're gonna end up with. Sometimes the dark spots come off successfully, other times they simply don't. But, at least ya have a chance they will. And you don't wanna try it again !