Cleaning Ancients without Destroying Them

One more thing, apparently the EU has decided to make it much more difficult to export uncleaned hoards recently, so I don't know if such opportunities will continue to exist. I know of one vendor that has shuttered recently claiming that the export regulations have forced them out of business - they apparently were a large player, with 30k likes on facebook.

 

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The UK recently passed a law, very quietly, no details yet, but provenance has to be prior to 1954. Don't know h

 

Sadly, I don't seem to have the patience to tackle a sack of grungy, dirty, loser coins




... luckily, enough members have told stories about their poor results (good enough for this impatient rabbit)

 

If nothing else works, electrolysis can sometimes yield great results, especially if the coin is heavily encrusted. However, if the encrustation is caused by corrosion of the surface, then the surface is already pitted and pockmarked, and removing the encrustation will yield an ugly surface.

The coin below is an extreme example, a coin that was heavily encrusted due to corrosion of the surface. Before electrolysis is was not even identifiable; it was just a large, ugly blob. Electrolysis did not cause the surface damage, but it revealed it. You can easily see where the surface was corroded and where it wasn't. This is most obvious on the reverse:

Vitellius
Imperator, 69 A.D.
Bronze As
Spanish (Tarraco?) mint
Obv: A VITELLIVS - IMP GERMAN
Rev: VICTORIA AVGVSTI - Victory, with shield inscribed S P Q R, between S and C
RIC 46
29mm, 8.4g.

Horrible shape, but at least now I know what it is, and it's a pretty scarce emperor.

Here's an electrolysis success story, albeit not a coin:

http://simoslife.blogspot.com/2016/08/before-and-after.html

 

Anyone used the Rochelle Salt and lye solution?

http://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=62196.0

http://www.coincommunity.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=107105