I recently purchased multiple rolls of V-Nickels and many of the rolls (stored in plastic tubes) had this weird, yucky green stuff on it. Can anybody enlighten me as to what it is, how it got there and how I can get rid of it without hurting the coins? Thank you.
Most compounds of nickel are green or green-blue. It could be chloride, oxide, carbonates, etc. and are commonly hydrates. Moisture got into the tube and stayed there for a while is my guess . Most are not water soluble, but in a lab are generally dissolved by acids or alkali, depending on the compounds. Quite possible the commercial Nic-a-Date might work, but never tried it. I would suspect the coin would be altered surfaced.
PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride) damage (green) been in plastic to long. pure acetone removes it. they sell acetone at Walmart in the hardware department by the paint thinner supplies. once it is done use distilled water to rinse the acetone off the coins. pat dry the coins.
The green material did not originate in the tubes shown. The old-time tubes are hard plastic and not made from PVC. So either they were transferred to the tubes with the green gunk on them by the original owner from pvc holders, or it was moisture reacting directly on the metal without PVC plasticizers effects. But acetone won't hurt to try, but I doubt it is organic based.
as moderator desertgem said... use at your own risk. I myself would try it. you do not want to leave that green stuff on there..... it will eat the coin up and damage it further.
TaborTot - Simply put the coins are covered with corrosion. And as Jim said, while you can get it off by using an acid or alkali , there is no getting it off without harming the coins. Of course the coins have already been harmed by the effects of the corrosion. And if the corrosion is not removed they will be harmed even more. So it's a sixes proposition - no matter what you do, more harm will be done. But let's say you do use an acid to remove the corrosion. Once that is done what you are going to see is a coin with its surface partially eaten away and covered with pits and bumps. That is given. And any part of the coin that did not have active corrosion on it will also be partially eaten away by the acid used to remove the corrosion. But even to do that much you will probably have to experiment some before you find the product that will work. And each experiment you do will eat away more of the coin. In my opinion, when presented with this situation, it's not even worth the effort of trying. But that's me, the opinions of others may vary.
I'd make sure you clean (by clean I mean dip in some acetone or other acceptable process for removing the possible contamination) the other rolls of coins as well if they were stored anywhere near or with these coins. PVC residue may be present on the other coins as well and might not be immediately visible.
I'd bet my last dollar that's not PVC residue on those coins. But your point is still valid, corrosion is contagious to other coins too. But they have to tough each other for it to pass from one to another. It's not like PVC that can be deposited on coin in gaseous form.
V nickels are 75% copper, the green is plain old verdigris, aka copper corrosion. Those old tubes are made of hard plastic, they contain no PVC. The verdigris is heavy, there will be pitting under much of it. First check to make sure there are no key dates in there. After that, there's not much you can do - they will be damaged using any sort of chemical removal process. A guy on ebay sells stuff he calls "Safe Clean", it might be able to remove some of the corrosion. It will take a harsh cleaning to have any effect on verdigris that thick. Good Luck