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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;gatzdon, post: 249114, member: 8247&quot;]<b>Why you shouldn&#039;t clean your coins!!</b></p><p><br /></p><p>OK, sharing my educational lesson with the newbies.</p><p><br /></p><p>Background: I like to search half dollar rolls.&nbsp; I occasionaly find proofs in circulation.&nbsp; I usually just dip them in Acetone to remove the fingerprints, then store them in my collection.</p><p><br /></p><p>Well, I found this one 85S that not only was dirty, but had some green crap on it that Acetone did nothing for.&nbsp; I then tried the thiourea acid and it removed much of the dirt/corrosion, but did little for the green crud.&nbsp; I then tried an overnight soak in Acetone and it helped, but still didn&#039;t get rid of all the green crud.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here&#039;s a link to a post from when I first found the coin.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://www.cointalk.org/showthread.php?t=25635" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.cointalk.org/showthread.php?t=25635" rel="nofollow">http://www.cointalk.org/showthread.php?t=25635</a></p><p><br /></p><p>------</p><p><br /></p><p>Flash forward to today.&nbsp; Like a kid staring at the cookie jar, I couldn&#039;t leave well enough alone.&nbsp; That green stuff just kept nagging at me.&nbsp; So I tried the thiourea acid for longer times and using a toothpick to rub the stuff off.&nbsp; Then I got distracted by the family and forgot the coin was sitting in acid.&nbsp; When I got back to it, </p><p>almost all the green crud was gone.&nbsp; I could also start to see what looked a little like bronze on the face.&nbsp; So I rinsed the coin off and put it in the acetone to try to remove what little of the green crud was left.</p><p><br /></p><p>When I pulled the coin out, imagine my surprise when I saw this.</p><p><br /></p><p>I learned 4 things from this.</p><p><br /></p><p>1. Don&#039;t ever try to clean a valuable coin.&nbsp; I knew I was playing with fire and yet kept trying because the coin would never be worth less than what I paid for it.</p><p><br /></p><p>2. I once found a kennedy that I thought was a lamination error of some type.&nbsp; Know I know it was just exposed to acid as it looks like this coin did before the final acetone bath.</p><p><br /></p><p>3. I&#039;ve found halves that looked like they might have been gold plated, but didn&#039;t look just right.&nbsp; I give those to my son because he thinks they are cool.&nbsp; I know now that they were most likely soaked in acid to dissolve the nickel, leaving a nice bronze look to them.</p><p><br /></p><p>4. I like the way the reverse looks and I might try experimenting with brand new coins to see if I can reproduce that effect.</p><p><br /></p><p>----------</p><p><br /></p><p>Lesson 1 bears repeating, don&#039;t ever attempt to clean a valuable coin.&nbsp; Had this coin been valuable, it only took minutes to make it worthless (or at least worth only face/melt value).[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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