Does professional coin conservation alter the value of a coin?

I think that coin is a good candidate for conservation, surface wise. I'm not familiar enough with its value to give you direction on ROI.

 

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Perhaps residue is a better word than staining. If you like the toning more than you hate the residue, I wouldn't risk it. Personally, I hate the residue looking stuff more! It will probably make it more marketable if not a higher grade.

PS: If you look at the FEC, the toning appears to have gone with the spots.

 

And in some of the after pictures you can see that the spots are still there.

 

I think that would be called a non-malignant stain! Perhaps it's also an example of lessening what constitutes environmental damage when it's on a great coin.

 

The spots are still there (meaning that the luster is inconsistent with the rest of the coin) but the build-up is not there. Big difference, I think.

 

Thank you for those pictures. I'm always looking for NCS before/after verdigris conservation pictures.

One thing I noticed on this coin, as well as others, is that NCS lightened the patina. On this coin, it is lightened more than I've ever seen.

 

Definately, copper has been removed from the surface. In those areas the verdigris was borderline heavy.

 

As mentioned, the obverse of the Flying Eagle cent posted above was definitely brightened up. I was told by NCS at the time that only the obverse was going to be treated to remove the spots and that in doing so it would brighten up the coin. The reverse was left alone as it didn't have similar spotting problems.

I'm not sure whether it being a copper-nickel cent made the results better/worse than with the more modern regular copper cents. I've always heard that getting spots off copper is tough and will leave behind a worse looking coin than w/ the spots and will also make the copper turn pink? Perhaps it's different with copper nickel cents?

While I was very happy that most of the spotting was gone (although traces could still be seen) to the point where it didn't detract from the coin, I ended up later selling the coin because the conservation to remove the spots also removed the darker color that I liked which served to mask many of the minor surface hits and ticks which were now very apparent. I also had a little bit of fear that the spots would return and not being 100% happy with the coin, I figured best to sell while I knew it looked market acceptable.