Quiz# 8 Natural or Artificial toning?

Everything burns! Metals oxide and burn at the right temperatures. Just have a beer and throw the can in a fire and see what happens, it’ll turn to ash. If you throw 12 gauge copper wire in a brush pile to remove the coating, make sure it’s not to hot or you will have a blue- green flame and just ash at the end. Wikipedia is not as bad as YouTube, but anyone can update it.

 

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Lite the edge and stand up wind. Put it out immediately after you confirm the result! You can still use the other side of the flip

 

All of the stuff about damage from flips proves the value in using cotton liners like most collectors of early coppers use. The cotton liner goes inside a 2 x 2 envelope and keeps it safe from contaminants in the envelope.
If you're really paranoid like I am, you can put your coin into a polyethylene bag. It neither scratches nor chemically damages the coin, and, if you fold it over, keeps air and moisture out.

 

I agree, copper wire can give a false positive. Did that and replaced holders that I should not have changed.

 

Guys, the Beilstein test is a test developed in 1872 and used by chemists since then. I have, myself, run the test literally hundreds of times! It is a test used in undergraduate classes. Burning a chlorine containing material such as PVC does not give a green flame. The chemical reaction of the copper or copper oxide with the chlorine in the PVC gives a chloride of copper that will give a green "flame test". I honestly don't know if aluminum wire would work, but seeing the melting point of aluminum is 700 degrees Celsius lower than the melting point of copper, and knowing that copper wire melts in a bunsen burner flame, I don't think an aluminum wire would work well. @ldhair clean copper wire will not give a false positive. Burn the chloride off first.