Cleaning and Toning of Ancient Coins; Opinions and Controversy Expected

Certainly not all, but the majority of US collectors have pigeonholed themselves into discussions of grade and eye-appeal. If you confine yourself to a very narrow band of types, and refuse to collect anything else, and the history of the coins is well-researched and exhausted, what is there left? Varieties and eye-appeal. Varieties are cut and dried - either a coin is a particular variety or it isn't. Eye-appeal is far more subjective, and subjectivity is the fodder of egos.

Personally, I need something far more substantial in my collecting aesthetics than fisticuffs about the attractiveness (or lack thereof) of the color of a layer of metal merely microns thick.

 

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As for how to store coins, I posted this in another thread but it's my opinion that Abafil trays and cases are the absolute best way to store ancients. They come in many different sizes (size of the slots to accommodate different size coins and number of coins per tray), they allow the coins to breath and tone, and are a fabulous method to display and interact with your coins. Nothing looks as good as an Abafil tray filled with ancient coins IMO.


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More pictures if it changes, please. I think your results look encouraging.

 

As nice as the trays are, they are very expensive and storing them can be burdensome due to space constraints. I would love to do abafil trays and I have tried pretty much all the methods but I keep going back to binders due to less space, cheap and my OCD of keeping tags/info with the coin with each other. I don't like the idea of flip tag under the coin in the tray.

 

Some surfaces can rainbow (yes I am using a noun as a verb) easier than others and they can come off just as easily. My silver Jacobian medal came simply toned, I put it with some boiled egg yolk in a tupperware for a few days to see what would happen and it acquired a wonderful color. When it was stolen, the combination of someone wiping it clean of fingerprints and the dusting powder the police used afterwards quickly reverted it to its non-Rainbow tone. I may or may not do it again someday with the medal. I tried this with a couple other coins (the stolen coin from Thasos for instance) and it did not rainbow at all. They had lightly toned surfaces and were not blast white. I would not bother trying to improve a coin that already had a nice patina. But if it was a lesser coin and blast white I might try to tart it up a bit. Too much rainbow however gets to be a bit much.

btw since I know how impermanent a rainbow tint is, and how easy it is to achieve, and how easily it can be lost, I won't pay more for it. If I find a coin with a long provenance and a good patina acquired over time, I will pay more for that.

 

Same here. The whole collection (I mean everything valuable, not the pocket change) is in Abafil

Q

 

Curious? ... what about tiny, teeny-weeny coins? (do they merely rattle/blow around in their big velvet trough?

 

Nothing tiny out there, just big chunks from the old world : you can't even close the cases !!

"Serious" mode on now : because there's some soft device that bumps below each tray, they fit very closely together. Unless you use a case as a shaker for your Martini, nothing happens

Q

 

Just reporting in to say that the coin has not darkened or otherwise changed since yesterday. I am happy with the results.

 

The trays come in many different sizes. I have mostly denarius size trays which are 1 inch square for each slot. I have a couple Ionian early fractionals which a tiny and they're fine when they rattle around. Each slot is cushy velvet and the bottom of the trays (which sit on top of the tray below it) are padded nylon. There are various size holding cases for the trays too so you don't just store an open tray.

Here's the different sizes off of Ed Waddell's website which consolidates the choices nicely.

77 spaces: 1 x 1: Cents to quarters; denarii
54 spaces: 1-1/4 x 1-1/4: Half dollar size
40 spaces: 1-3/8 X 1-3/8: Most ancients .
24 spaces: 1-7/8 x 1-7/8: Most popular size fits standard flippette tickets: silver dollar & crown size
24 spaces: 1-7/8 x 1-7/8: Tray with dark wood edging; excellent for display
15 spaces: 2-3/8 x 2-3/8: Medals and 2 x 2 holders
6 spaces: 4 x 4: Medals and Multiples
1 space: Display and jewelry size

 

Currently, the smallest Lindner trays I have are 16mm. Anything which is smaller and which I consider "valuable" goes into a quadrum capsule so it doesn't get lost. In due course, I will be changing my circular trays for square ones which allow a greater depth for the coin.

 

Funny. Just last night I ordered the Mini-Diplomat 2 case with a 6 space and a 12 space tray from Ed. It joins the filled Mini-Diplomat 1 (12 space) that I got from him last year. Love them. Fit almost anywhere (safe, safety deposit box, briefcase, etc.) Pricey, but the coins cost so much more anyway and they display well.

Mine do need to be re-centered in their spots when moved around.

 

John, their standards on grade worthiness are arbitrary, as well. Define "NT" and "AT." Yet those standards persist, I'll suggest, for the very reason they can't be defined. Advantage, the TPGs, and so-called "experts," every collector now has to rely on to collect by these arbitrary standards. They swallowed it. Just keep feeding them a steady diet of it. That's how it works.

 

The mindset has been encroaching on ancients for some time now. I saw more slabbed ancients at the Baltimore show last week than I had ever seen before. Mind you, I have absolutely no argument with proper authentication, or even slabs, and David Vagi and his crew at NGC are respected professionals. But if I had my druthers, they would just mark the slabs "authentic," and leave the cesspool of modern grading out of the equation. It sucks far too many people out of numismatics and into the types of trivialities you list.

 

Wait until collectors are saying they won't take a chance on a "raw" ancient. At that point, you'll be collecting slabs. What they did in U.S. coins is they took our minds out of grading, with their "market" standards. No longer are we meaningful participants in a hobby, as we were when we were grading on technical condition, but investors in commodities.

 

Wait until they start to add CAC stickers to ancient slabbed coins. Then the Alexander III you could have bought for $300 raw is now $450 slabbed, but if it has a CAC sticker it is now $550.

CAC, that's the new fad. Basically if PCGS grades a Morgan Dollar MS-63 you now send it to CAC and they supposedly get a team of experts to decide if it is barely MS-63 (in which case it doesn't get a sticker), or whether it is a high end MS-63, in which case it gets the magical sticker and now the coin is worth a lot more.

Once that happens to Ancients, its game over. You will no longer have that many numismatists and instead you'll have a flood of investors coming in and overpaying for coins with certain grades and magical green stickers for investment purposes. That is what is happening to American coins. It gets tiring when you are trying to discuss the elements of the design of the coin or the history when the only thing these investors care to discuss is "how much do you think this coin will be worth in 5 years".

 

Thats why I feel the majority of us have gone to ancients. The slab world has killed my interest in U.S. coins. I appreciate a good looker like anyone else but this year I have parted with much of my type set and really have no regrets.

I have tons more fun with ancients. It's made coin collecting much more enjoyable since I got back into it in 2009.

I really hope ancients never become a slab market like u.s. It will hurt the ancient segment more to me then any country and import law ever could. I know I would probably stop all together if the ancient world was nearly all slabbed and overpriced like u.s. is.

 

Cleaning coins should always be done by the professionals. If you are not only try your hand with coins you can destroy and not be unhappy about it. I've been dealing for over 25 years but prefer to leave it to those who know more than I do. This humble coin here is the first one I ever cleaned, bought from a junk lot from Francis Rath (likely no list members here who remember him) probably 30 years ago. Turned out OK, but will need another 100 years to tone back down naturally. I do remember experimenting with electrolysis. I know some have great results with it, but my first experiment was not so good. I had a junk lot that I put in together, turned out a nice and really rare Byzantine was in there, potentially worth $500. I left it in the solution too long (or had the power up too high, or combination of all?). When I went back to check it after another 30 minutes, the damned thing had actually dissolved to about 50% of its original size!

 

Ah slabs. As far as I know there are no ancient dealers who like them (though I do know there are some who have gone to the 'Dark Side' as a matter of economics). In the beginning slabs had no bearing on the ancient market. Now they are becoming more prevalent. It has come to the point where the big US dealers (Heritage is the one who is spearheading the idea) are promoting slabbed ancients. Ancient collectors dont add any value to slabs, but non-ancient collectors do. They are happy to pay a few hundred dollars for a $50 coin because it is slabbed (looking at Heritage I see even $25 coins selling at that level). BUT, they will never get their money back in their lifetime, but I suppose they dont care. Its what they know. Anyway, I myself do handle a few slabbed ancients, but only when they come in as part of a collection. I have never slabbed one and never will. BUT, if a coin comes to me slabbed I leave it alone and just pass it on. The collector can break it out if they want, and I suspect many do just that.

Ken

 

You know things are getting bad when slabs are not good enough, and now a sticker on a slab is worth a 25% increase in price. I heard that CAC is now not alone, there is another sticker service. Pretty soon there will be a race for slabs with multiple stickers.

When that happens, we should all pitch in and open a slabbed slab service. Basically, why take the risk that your PCGS slabbed coin with 3 or 4 stickers may have non-genuine stickers or a tampered slab? For $50 we will slab your slab and guarantee it's authenticity and the authenticity of the stickers stuck to it, raising the price of your slab...I mean coin...another 25%.

Anyone in? We could become millionares.

 

Until they post their ratty, common, overgraded follis of Licinius/Jupiter (that they paid $100 for) on CT, and we tell them the truth. A few collectors have stomped out of this forum and slammed the door on the way out, but what can you do?