I have a bunch of coins that I want to send out to get certified but a few of them have either thumb prints or other debris on them. Should I attempt to clean these off, and if so, how, or will it de-value the coin and just leave as is?
NOOOOOOOOO NEVER EVER CLEAN A COIN!! For one, if its cleaned, it wont get slabbed, and two, it will decrease the value. If some look like corrosion or environmental damage, send them to NCS (Thats NGC's company for damaged coins) they will slab em.
olvie oil is mainly for ancients, and WD-40, temporalily removes corrosion, but it will come back in a year twice as bad.
Overwhelmingly clear not to clean them, thanks. One question though, how much would a fingerprint lower the overall grade of a coin?
A quick rinse with Acetone followed by Distilled Water and an air dry would remove the oils from the fingerprint to prevent further damage to the coin, but if the fingerprint has changed the metal in any way already, there is nothing more that you can do.
If you still have Lead-Acid battery, open the ports and take some of the acid out. Place all your coins in a Aluminum pan with the acid. Leave for one year. :smile :whistle: OK now for real, don't do anything with the coins. If you have coins worth grading, NGC will usually do a little professional cleaning if possible. Do not try any things people say is OK because they are not their coins so they can tell you anything and if it doesn't work and you ruin the coins, they just say Oh well to bad, your coins, so. As to stuff like Olive Oils or WD-40 and other oily cleaning agents. There have been reports of people using such things and having good, decent, great or horrible results. The reason it varies is the solution used varies as well as the climatic conditions used. Note Olive Oil for example. This is a man made substance and varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. Some may have numerous contaminates that are not dangerous for some things but may effect coins. Same with WD-40. Even similar cans from the same shelf may contain slightly different ingrediants pending the manufacturing processes. In industry there are numerous differences bases on tolerances in the end product. For example even a steel beam can have as much as a fraction of an inch in size difference and still be called the same thing as specified. This is well true of substances like Olive Oil. Even the containers used for these substances could change their chemical structure. Summation: DO NOT CLEAN COINS.
