Hello everyone. I have a general question for the experts here. I recently received a small "collection" of various US coins from my grandmother. These coins include many wheat ears pennies, buffalo nickels, wartime nickels, a Barber dime, Mercury dime, silver quarter, and Franklin halves. Sadly, these coins were all stored together in an old "change purse" that seems to be disintegrating from the inside. Many of the coins are green, slimy, and sticky from being in this "container" while some are just sort of dirty from either past circulation or the storage method. I know from this forum that actually cleaning coins is seriously frowned upon, but what is a safe method of "improving" these coins so they aren't so icky? I can post some pix of the change purse or the coins if more info is needed. Thanks for any input.
A bit of acetone to stabilize things......not really cleaning, and completely safe. From there we can go on, but you've got to get rid of the green goo first.
First, there are no experts here. But we all think we are. Second, go to Kroger or CVS and buy a jar of 100% pure acetone from the nail care section. Pour some into a glass jar and let your coins soak in the acetone for a few hours. It won't harm the coins. But DON'T scrub the coins clean, just rinse and repeat. Use a q-tip ever so slightly if you must, but again, DON'T SCRUB, just touch it onto those tough spots that don't want to budge. Most of that slime and green gunk should come off.
I haven't looked closely, but I didn't think you could get 100% pure acetone there, only "nail polish remover" with scents and whatnot added that's bad for coins. Everyone else says you should find it in a hardware store. Is there a brand or something you've found that's available in other kinds of stores, maybe in smaller quantities than the quarts or gallons hardware stores sell?
They sell 100% pure there, no scented crap. I like the small jar. Easier to deal with and last me a pretty long time.
Even with "pure" acetone, you will see one added ingredient if they're being pedantic on the label: Denatonium Benzoate. This is apparently the nastiest-tasting stuff known to man, added as a bitterant to make it unpalatable to children and animals. It's so powerful that the concentration amounts to a few cc's in a 55-gallon drum.
Huh. I didn't know acetone required that. Makes sense, I suppose. Fortunately it doesn't look like something that would affect metal or toning, even at higher concentrations, although I'll defer to @BadThad and the rest of the chemists on that point. Pre-posting edit: The brand sold at Wal-Mart, at least, doesn't declare it in its safety data sheet: http://www.kleanstrip.com/uploads/documents/GAC18_SDS-LL34.pdf I think acetone tastes awful enough that they don't feel compelled to denature it. Also, I apparently now have at least one drug-cooking site in my browsing history. Sigh.
I don't know if it's universal, but I've seen it listed often enough that I felt it should be mentioned. Hope your browser doesn't consider Kleanstrip - a major national player in the solvent industry (both my employer and our competitor, Home Depot, sell their stuff exclusively) - a "drug" site.
No, that would be the site where people were asking whether the poster was planning to drink acetone, and he explained that he was only using it to extract something that he'd then put under his tongue to be absorbed.
That's scary.......I trust Lowes or Home Depot for something like that. Cripes, what the devil is wrong with CVS carrying a product such as this? Bloody Pharmacy, and nothing to due (do?) with chemicals of that sort.......
Heh. When I was just a little chemistry-set enthusiast, I used to check out chemistry books for kids from the library. It was an old library, and most of the books were from the 1950s and 1960s. Many, if not most, of them said "ask your local pharmacist" to get you the good chemicals -- potassium chlorate, carbon tetrachloride, that sort of fun stuff. I was at a summer residential program in 1979 for high school students, and met a soul-mate of sorts with exactly the same chemistry enthusiasm that I had. We actually went to the town pharmacy and asked for potassium chlorate. The pharmacist asked what we two teenage boys wanted with potassium chlorate. We gave him our best wide-eyed look and said "we're with the Governor's School, and we want it for some experiments". We walked out with all he had. (I don't remember where we got everything else, but when the town fireworks on July 4th proved underwhelming, we stepped in. Until the poor campus security officer managed to get there. We promised to stop, and to clean up after ourselves, but I couldn't resist pointing to the glittery purple pile on top of a manhole cover and saying "just make sure nobody puts any water on that!" The poor guy.) Different times...
Verdi-Care worked for me several times with coins in this condition. Follow directions from the manufacturer and Bob's your uncle...
Aw, now ya done it. Actually, I'd be more worried about malicious software on a site like that than I would getting onto somebody's list. By now half the country has to be on lists like that; it's not like they have the time and manpower to really care.
