A Complete Guide To Cleaning, Preservation and Conservation of Coins, page 1
How To Clean and Preserve All Kinds of Coins, Tokens and Medals
This section contains information on what to do and what not to do with coin finds from recovery to collection.
The information presented in this section is primarily for the inland coin hunter, however, those detectorists who search for jewelry and relics, and everybody else who collect the coins and artifacts, can greatly benefit from reading these chapters as well.
In the chapters below you can find some useful tips and information related to cleaning and preservation of coins, tokens, medals or relics. Please feel free to submit your own practical tips and methods that could help others!
To determine whether your coin is a key-date piece, i.e. highly valuable, or not, you can visit my Numismatic Corner - a guide to the US and other coins, where you will find US coins' key-dates, coin images, numismatic information and specifics.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- 1. Individual Descriptions of Coin Metals, Alloys and Their Natural Changes:
- Platinum, Gold, Silver, Nickel and Copper
- Iron, Zinc, Tin, Lead and Aluminum
- 2. Cleaning Your Coins:
- Mechanical Coin Cleaning:
- Soaking Before Cleaning
- Cleaning by Frozen Water Expansion
- Cleaning with Brushes
- Cleaning with a Toothpick
- Cleaning with Masking Tape
- Cleaning with Ink-Erasing Pencil
- Carpenter's Glue Method
- Wet Cleaning with Rubbing with Fingers
- Removal of Tar
- Removal of Other Unnatural Coatings
- Cleaning with Tumblers
- Ultrasonic Removal of Dirt and Deposits (mechanical/chemical)
- Chemical Coin Cleaning:
- Immersion Bath:
- Electro-Chemical and Electolytic Coin Cleaning:
- 1) Electro-Chemical Reduction - Galvanic Cleaning
- 2) Electrolytic Reduction - Electrolysis
- 3) Soaking After Galvanic or Electrolytic Cleaning
- Cleaning Silver Coins
- Cleaning Gold Coins
- Cleaning Copper, Bronze and Brass Coins
- Cleaning Aluminum Coins and Tokens
- Cleaning Iron Coins
- Cleaning Zinc Coins
- Cleaning Tin Coins
- Cleaning Lead Coins
- Cleaning Clustered (Unearthed) Coins
- Cleaning Lacquered Coins
- 3. Brightening Your Coins:
- 4. Tarnishing Your Coins:
- Tarnishing Silver Coins
- Tarnishing Copper Coins:
- Tarnishing/Patinating Copper Coins with Ammonia Vapor
- Artificial Patination of Copper Coins (9 Desirable Color Tones)
- Tarnishing Zinc Coins
- Tarnishing Iron Coins
- 5. Straightening Bent Silver Coins
- Unbend A Badly Crumpled Coin - Tutorial
- 6. Restoring Worn Impression to Visibility
- 7. Preservation and Conservation of Coins:
- Safekeeping Coins:
- Useful Tips for Preservation of Coins:
Removing Rust from Iron Artifacts with Electrolysis - The most detailed and illustrated 150-picture Tutorial on the web - Part I
Removing Hard Encrustations from Coins with Electrolysis - The most detailed and illustrated 50-picture Tutorial on the web - Part II