World Coins: Your Newest Acquisition!

Another one from the Stephen Album sale. Once again, there photos and description.



Obverse: Laureate head right
Reverse: Elephant left, date below

Composition: Copper

CEYLON: George III, 1760-1820, AE ½ stiver, 1815, KM-80, Prid-92, bust right // elephant left, hints of red, one-year type, UNC, ex Jerry D. Williams Collection. An Order in Council dated 1st April, 1814, authorized a silver and copper coinage for Ceylon to the extent of 10,000 rixdollars in silver and 200,000 rixdollars in copper. The silver coinage was to consist of one denomination and the copper coinage of five. On the 1st December, 1814, the Royal Mint, London, received orders from the Treasury to strike the coinage. For the copper coinage, although dies were prepared by Thomas Wyon for a ¼ stiver, only three denominations, the 2, 1 and ½ stiver were struck for circulation. The metal for this Ceylon coinage was obtained from demonetized English halfpence. All coins struck bear the date 1815.

 

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Thoughts on conservation? I will start with a distilled water soak.

 

Razz: very nice coin! After the distilled water soak (which I suspect will give only limited results — hope I’m wrong) you may wish to try a good soak in acetone (pure stuff from a hardware store, NOT nail polish remover). If, say, an overnite bath doesn’t get the grunge off, you might try (believe it or not) a soak in olive oil. This might need a lengthy soak, so be patient. (Checking to see how it’s going is OK ...). Oh, and don’t waste the good Extra Virgin stuff; cooking grade works just as well, if not better (slightly higher concentration of oleic acid, which is what does the work). I currently have an otherwise nice VF 1871 IHC going into its third month — or is it the fourth — of treatment, but it was an ugly patch of hard black crud, not like yours. Mine already looks MUCH nicer! Let’s hear how it goes with you.
Dave S.

 

Order of Malta 1968

 

Thanks Dave, yeah the distilled water helped a bit but acetone is the next step!

 

Nice, Malta has put out some really nice coins in my opinion. I tend to buy them whenever I come across one I don't have.

 

I like how the font of the obverse legends always gives away that it is a Maltese piece before paging down to see the reverse!

 

Depending on how effective the acetone is, consider following that with xylene. That's a nice coin, but has some gunk that really needs to be gotten off.

 

Thanks! Definitely will try that. I have the pure acetone, where is a good source for xylene?

 

Same place you find the acetone. Home Depot, Lowe's, Ace Hardware, etc.

 

Thanks!

 

Yes. Good for you, Maxfli; v. sound followup.

 

A pair of Portuguese India coppers that came a few days ago.

 

Careful with the olive oil! It can take away the surface toning of the copper. I use it carefully with a soft tooth brush and tooth pick to remove such gunk, then immediately wash well in the kitchen sink. The olive oil is slightly acidic and a long soak might discolor the coin.

 

Here is a before and after example of my cleaning method as described above. Looks like it could use a bit more tooth pick work.

 

Coin Nut: Yes, I have seen other posters voice the same caution but no, in my several adventures with this process, I have never had the misadventure you warn about. In my current ongoing job described above the IHC I’m working on has been in the soup now for over 3 months with no apparent effect on the toning other than a VERY slight overall lightening, which has left a somewhat darkish piece actually looking better! I guess “your mileage may vary” is true sometimes... And yes, gently picking away at the crud with something WAY softer than the coin as you describe would probably well serve Razz. I’m having to cope with much harder stuff than you & Razz are. I learned about the oil soak from some ancients collectors; they swear by it. Anyhow, let’s see how it goes.

 

My newest acquisitions courtesy of some family friends.

 

I heard tell if you freeze this coin in distilled water then thaw several times the contraction of the medal may loosen the material around the devices.
This may take several freeze/thaws....to get the dirt to loosen.

 

I wonder if you could thermally shock the coin to loosen deposits? I am thinking of freezing a coin then dropping it in boiling water, or possibly heating the coin to about 150F then dropping it in ice water. I will experiment on some no value coins and see what happens.

 

So here is my after acetone soak of 4 hours. I used a qtip and toothpick to try and loosen the gunk a bit as well. I have tried previously to heat the distilled water prior to soaking the coin. Looks like xylene and or freezer method next.