First attempt with acetone/water soaking/dipping

Actually the acetone will remove many organic substances, not all. Water will remove inorganic substances including generic "dirt", and organic substances that acetone won't remove can be removed with xylene (or other hydrocarbons you are comfortable with using). I don't think any of these will touch toning, attractive or otherwise...to do that we have to talk about dips.

 

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Not only preparation, but subsequent treatment. After a coin is cleaned, the fresh surface is an innocent in our harsh world. I'm not sure what to recommend for this other than to protect it from the elements in a flip, a 2x2 or a snap case.

 

Or am I thinking ezest ? I thought xylene was preferred vs acetone because of the potential color change

 

Neither acetone for xylene should touch real toning. EZest will somewhat strip the coin...a little stripping doesn't hurt if you are careful.

 

I know they acetone and xylene won't hurt the toning, it's the pink copper comment that you quoted of mine is what the question was about

 

Sorry, copper coins cleaned so as to remove toning will tend to tone pink. Since acetone or Xylene will not affect toning, there should be little danger of pinking. I trust @BadThad who has handled more Lincolns than I.

 

Acetone and xylene serve different purposes. As far as copper, I use acetone mainly for drying, dusting and skin oil removal. For conservation, xylene is generally much more effective on surface residues. I really like xylene for browned copper. NEITHER will affect the color of copper (unless your Doug, lol).

 

But but that is my name

 

Oh no...say it ain't so Joe...uh...I mean Doug.

 

I'm not familiar with xylene. Is this a chemical sold at Home Depot? Or is it always mixed with something? Etc. It sounds safer than dip but more effective than acetone, which makes it appealing to me. Any help is appreciated

 

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...ggeMAE&usg=AFQjCNFBchfW-WyRjBVjzhfsn4a4Gz5M9Q

3. COMPOSITION/INFORMATION ON INGREDIENTS
Concentration
Xylene (mixed isomers) {Benzene, dimethyl-}60.0 -100.0 %
Ethylbenzene {Ethylbenzol; Phenylethane}10.0 -30.0 %
Cumene {Benzene, 1-Methylethyl-;Isopropylbenzene} 0.1 -1.0 %
Ethylbenzene is a component of Xylene.

 

I'm neither a chemist nor a metallurgist, so I can only speak anecdotally:

• Every silver and Cu-Ni coin I buy (that's not slabbed) gets an acetone bath to remove organic crud. This includes even coins that appear clean and uncirculated, because I have no way of knowing how they've been stored and handled, and there may be things on the coin surface that I can't see. Been doing this for decades and have never experienced a single problem with acetone. It simply doesn't interact with the metals.

• For copper coins, my experience is consistent with Thad's — xylene is more effective and that's all I use.

• After the xylene, don't forget to finish with Thad's Verdi-Care before casing your coin. In my humble opinion, Verdi-Care is the single best thing to ever happen for collectors of copper coins.

• Regarding Thad's bolded statement, I've had a handful of experiences in which coins containing copper were discolored by acetone. Two I can specifically recall — one coin was identified by NGC and Numista as bronze, the other as nickel-brass. Both came out "splotchy", as if a layer of plating had been removed. These were modern coins from rather poor African nations, so it's possible the discoloration was due to impurities or imperfections in the minting processes, and the presence of copper was coincidental.

Take-away: Exercise restraint if it's a type of coin with which you don't have prior successful experience using acetone or xylene.

• Haven't seen this mentioned, so I will: don't soak aluminum coins in acetone...it will produce pitting on the coin's surface. Again, I'm not a chemist so cannot hazard a guess as to why. I've just learned the hard way that it does. Can't speak to xylene's effect on aluminum, since I haven't tried it.

 

They have ZERO effect on copper toning.

If that happened, then there was a residue on the surface of the coin. It needs to removed using the CORRECT solvent....and acetone obviously is not the solvent.

I have ONE single "bad" experience with acetone on a bronze, copper-based token that was my Grandfathers. Acetone created a haze on the surface. I soaked the token in xylene for 24 hours and the invisible surface residue was removed. I hit it again with acetone after the xylene and no haze was produced.

I suspect that these "very knowledgeable and well respected collectors and dealers" don't know squat about chemistry. They hit a coin with acetone, some something weird happened and concluded, without further investigation, that acetone effects copper.

Xylene will absolutely NOT remove anything that acetone will! They are VERY different solvents, acetone is polar and xylene is non-polar. Acetone is totally ineffective at dissolving longer-chain organics. Try mixing oil and acetone, they will separate....just like with water. I always CRINGE when I see people using EVO and saying they rinsed it off with water at the end. Neither water nor acetone will remove oil from a coin surface!