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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Maxfli, post: 2466302, member: 69089&quot;]I&#039;m neither a chemist nor a metallurgist, so I can only speak anecdotally:</p><p><br /></p><p>• Every silver and Cu-Ni coin I buy (that&#039;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&#039;ve been stored and handled, and there may be things on the coin surface that I can&#039;t see. Been doing this for decades and have never experienced a single problem with acetone. It simply doesn&#039;t interact with the metals.</p><p><br /></p><p>• For copper coins, my experience is consistent with Thad&#039;s — xylene is more effective and that&#039;s all I use.</p><p><br /></p><p>• After the xylene, don&#039;t forget to finish with Thad&#039;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.</p><p><br /></p><p>• Regarding Thad&#039;s bolded statement, I&#039;ve had a handful of experiences in which coins containing copper were discolored by acetone.&nbsp; Two I can specifically recall — one coin was identified by NGC and Numista as bronze, the other as nickel-brass. Both came out &quot;splotchy&quot;, as if a layer of plating had been removed. These were modern coins from rather poor African nations, so it&#039;s possible the discoloration was due to impurities or imperfections in the minting processes, and the presence of copper was coincidental. </p><p><br /></p><p>Take-away: Exercise restraint if it&#039;s a type of coin with which you don&#039;t have prior successful experience using acetone or xylene.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>• Haven&#039;t seen this mentioned, so I will: <b>don&#039;t soak aluminum coins in acetone...it will produce pitting on the coin&#039;s surface.</b> Again, I&#039;m not a chemist so cannot hazard a guess as to why. I&#039;ve just learned the hard way that it does.&nbsp; Can&#039;t speak to xylene&#039;s effect on aluminum, since I haven&#039;t tried it.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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