All of the Silver I get from either the UK or Canada has either Milk Spots on them or it's me handling them I'm not sure but kinda irks me since I spent good paper on them. Will buying a pair of Cotton gloves work to avoid this. Sorry I meant Cotton Gloves not silk
They are milk spot from the mint. Clean hands, handling coins by the edges, are always safe. I actually believe cotton gloves are dangerous to handle coins with.
It probably isn't you either way, but a processing problem. All fiber ( cotton) gloves are harder than coin metals and can scratch it. Holding a coin by the edge in clean hands is usually the best. If one wants to wear gloves, disposable nitrile is better except when rinsing with acetone.
The fiber is actually softer than the coin metal, but they catch and hold dust from the air. A lot of dust is made up if silicates (think very tiny sand particles) and those silicates ARE harder than the metal. The dust effectively makes the cloth a very fine grade sandpaper.
When I wear gloves I loose a lot of sensitivity in the tips of my fingers........how do you hold coins? Tips of your fingers........bare handed all the way. And clean hands like the fellows mentioned above.
Most of my coins already saw tens of thousands of hands, so I'm not too concerned about one more pair touching them. But I still only handle them by the edges even if they're only G04.
What you say about dust is true, silicates @ Mohs hardness of 7, whereas gold and silver are approx 2.5-3. But the hardness of cellulose ( depending on the plant fiber) is in the 5 range. Even the cotton gloves for clean rooms ( no dust) can scratch the surface of a gold or silver coin if applied to the surface. Certainly, treatment of the cellulose with chemicals to soften the structure of the cellulose can make it more flexible and softer to the touch, but the hardness of the material is still there, just more difficult to measure with micro-instruments.
I wouldn't wear gloves to pick up a PR69DCAM Barber Quarter. Especially not a PR69DCAM Barber Quarter. In truth, you wouldn't catch me dead using gloves to pick up a valuable coin, ever. I'm not surrendering an iota of tactile sensation when handling a coin. TPG graders don't use gloves, either, for the same reason.
The ones given were for pure metal, as once into alloys, the hardness varies according to what the other added metals happen to be ( silver, copper, zinc, even nickel for low carat gold alloys. 24K 2.5Moh 18K 2.75 14K 3-4 * more variability to alloyed metals About the only alloy of silver of interest is Sterling, and as long as it is 92.5% silver, the rest can be copper or other metal alloyed to increase the hardness, such as copper. But due to the metallic bonding of copper and silver, the peak hardness is 20% - 60% copper, and softer on either side Sorry the chart uses a different hardness scale, but relative wise close to same. from:http://www.riogrande.com
