Hi guys, I have several uncleaned coins that seem like they may be silver however they are just so black and dirty that I cannot tell. Will soaking in distilled water do the trick or should i try rubbing a bit of lemon juice on it so that I can know whether or not it's silver? Thanks,
I had nothing but bad results when I put lemon juice on some unclean ancient Roman coins 10+ years ago. From what I can recall, the lemon juice turned the coins white and made them look awfully unnatural. I believe they were bronze but one or two may have been silver as well. At any rate, the coins never recovered. I would stick with distilled water or an alternative method but I would avoid lemon juice at all costs.
dsmith (go Tigers) has the right of it for starters. See if you can attribute what you have both with catalogs/on-line resources (wildwinds for one). Weight and measurements go a long way in identifying these coins as well. Also, try a magnet. If attracted to the magnet, it's not silver.
Thanks for your replies. Unfortunately some of these are not roman, could be Islamic for all i know, so its hard to get about researching them.
I agree with most here, its better to identify the coin. Any test for silver could be ruinous for copper, so just "testing" if its silver could be damaging the coin. Education and learning what the coin is FIRST, then seeing what the coin is made of, is the only proper way to go before cleaning it. Frank Robinson, (a pretty respected dealer), once had a mystery Byzantine copper. He went up to Simon Bendall, (an expert in late Byzantine), and Mr. Bendall took one glance at it and told him the emperor and it was in fact silver. Frank cleaned it and found out it was indeed silver. That is the way to do it, with KNOWLEDGE first.
If you can't attribute any of the coins with the dirt on them, your first course of action should be soaking in distilled water, changing it every few days and very gentle brushing with a very soft toothbrush. You may also be able to loosen some of the encrustations by prying at them with a toothpick.
what JA said, try the distilled water an toothbrush..maybe a bit of toothpick work as well...first. if you got it in an uncleaned lot, it not going to be silver probably. i have picked up silvered bronze uncleaned coin however.
Thanks for your replies guys, I'll make sure to try ID the coin before doing anything else. For now I'll just continue to soak them in distilled water
Sure it is if your goal is to ruin a coin about as quickly as possible. Coke has WAY too much acid for cleaning coins. Its uncontrollable, and will result 99% of the time either with no effect or serious damage. When cleaning coins, always start out with the gentlest method, and move up in harsher methods as needed.
It worries me when someone uses the words ancient and Krause in the same breath since it guarantees that the meaning of neither is known. The oldest Krause listing is about a thousand years after the newest ancient coin. There are very few genuine, official ancient coins made with the same design in the same size out of both silver and base metal so ID the coins first and clean accordingly. The same thing that cleans one metal can really harm another. Distilled water soaks should allow ID to the point that the next step can be decided upon. Any question asked here without photos of the subject coin is not likely to get an answer of any value.
