My favorite has been (by far) the Prinz 1008 coin tweezers. Problem is...I bought one pair and can't remember where I bought it (at some coin shop in the US a few years ago.) They are for sale on eBay, Amazon, Prophila, and through the Prinz website...but the shipping and handling charges are OUTRAGEOUS (much more than the cost of the tweezers - example - Prinz website charges about $13 Euros for the tweezers, shipping is like $40 Euros...PER item.) If you find any of them at a USA LCS, I'll buy two and pay for shipping.
There are occasions - far rarer than tends to get discussed around here - when an appropriate conservation step for a coin is the use of thiourea, a substance which strips the outermost layer of molecules off the surface of a coin and thereby removes something whose removal is in the coin's best interest, which can't be removed by a less-invasive process. This process is referred to as "dipping," although there are those who use the same term in a much more general meaning. Its' use is bandied about way more frequently than the very rare cases when it's actually the right thing to do, and it is likely the reason why so many "blast white" Morgans are extant more than a century after they were minted. Morgans have been dipped to remove toning by the thousands; more knowledgeable people believe that percentage reaches a majority of Morgans still extant. All the same, it's my opinion that a very limited justifiable use case does exist for thiourea. And when performing the operation, a pair of tongs is the best way to do it since one's fingers cover too much of the coin and I'm not really a fan of putting my flesh into something capable of dissolving metal.
Bought these last year and they work: http://www.ebay.com/itm/6-8-Wood-Co...478959?hash=item48901d36af:g:oA0AAOSwceNZXWX~
Wow...so many choices. I took a regular pair of tweezers and just dipped them in hot glue and then let it set. Cheap or inexpensive as it were and you can put as many layers of hot glue on as you want. Viola!
Generally, these tongs are designed to grip the coin by the rim, just like one would if holding with their fingers. It's never appropriate to touch the faces of a Mint State coin, and if it's a circulated coin you don't mind touching, you don't need tongs in the first place. Kointongs are $2.21 at Wizard.
