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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 3442585, member: 112&quot;]Try a little experiment on your own. Get some new copper cents from change. And get yourself a soft brass brush, you&#039;ll find them in most hardware stores. Then lightly brush the surface of the cents with the brush. I guarantee you that you will see hairlines on the coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for the mineral oil, there is no shortage of articles and even books where it is recommended and has been reported to be used for many, many decades. It&#039;s use probably goes back over a 100 years. But here&#039;s the thing, and it is also why the brush was recommended. The purpose of the brush was to remove harmful deposits on the coin, particularly verdigris. And the reason the idea arose at all is obvious, it is because mechanical agitation works better at removing stuff than no mechanical agitation at all. Verdigris in particular has always been a problem that plagued copper collectors. And since verdigris is the result of corrosion on copper, copper collectors have always wanted to get it off their coins. In the beginning they never really understood that verdigris itself wasn&#039;t the problem, verdigirs is merely the result of the problem - that being copper corroding.</p><p><br /></p><p>Once they did understand, that&#039;s when the mineral oil came into play. It&#039;s purpose was to help stop the corrosion in the first place by creating an oily barrier that prevented air, and the moisture contained in the air, from getting to the copper and causing that corrosion they all hated. And it did its job. That&#039;s how and why the practice originated to begin with.</p><p><br /></p><p>But using a brush of any kind on a coin is nothing more than a form of harsh cleaning. And when the practice of using the brush and mineral oil originated, harsh cleaning of one&#039;s coins was de riguer - it was not only acceptable, it was expected. So nobody saw any harm in using the brush on coins. Or the oil for that matter, because the combination of the two things did exactly what they wanted it to do. And they were quite happy with it. In effect,, the brush and oil is the lesser of two evils, except that they don&#039;t see it as being an evil to begin with.</p><p><br /></p><p>I suppose the best way to put it is that it&#039;s something that has been accepted and practiced for so long, that they simply don&#039;t see anything wrong with it. And in that regard it&#039;s like harsh cleaning in general. It too was accepted and expected for hundreds of years. And it has only been in the last few decades that harsh cleaning of coins has come to be on its way to extinction.</p><p><br /></p><p>But like I said, try it yourself, see it (the hairlines) with your own eyes. And you will definitely see it. But the congealing and breaking down of the oil, that takes much longer to happen. But it too will happen. It is a given, not a maybe.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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