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Experience using MS70 Coin Brightener

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weavus135
Valued Member
United States
110 Posts

Posted 03/09/2010 4:34 pm

so I went ahead a did what many of you all say never to do and that was clean a coin or two with MS70. They were not expensive coins or even close to being expensive so I wasn't worried at all about value issues. I wanted to see what happened.

I tried it on an aluminum coin and had what I thought was a pretty weird experience but I was looking for others' thoughts.

I applied the product as prescribed with a qtip and let it sit a moment. But what happened is that it started foaming when I started to gently swap it and I could hear and feel what I will describe as sizzling or fizzing - your choice. And the end of the experiment, I washed the coin thoroughly and patted it dry (I know a precaution not necessary since I just ruined it by cleaning it anyway). Nonetheless, I took a look at it and it was indeed much cleaner but it had blotches (not sure what elese to call them) on it. Maybe they were there before the dirt but again I was looking for input. What is in this stuff that it would do this to aluminum? Oh, and the bottle doesn't say a thing about aluminum - either being safe or unsafe for it - so I played. I probably won't play again.

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nod2003
Pillar Of The Community

United States
1889 Posts

Posted 03/09/2010 5:00 pm

Well foaming and sizzling could be one of two things. Either there is hydrogen peroxide in that cleaning product, which reacts with organics in such a manner, (one way to tell is if the bottle it came in is transparent to light or not, since light exposure will kill H2O2). The other possibility is that it is a reactive acid. I would lean to the first choice since a cleaner that reacted that strongly with aluminum would probably have all kinds of hazardous warnings on it and you could not let it touch your skin. Obviously acid would ruin the coin's value. Not so sure with H2O2, though if it discoulored the metal, I would definitely avoid using it.

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Sap
Moderator

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Australia
5497 Posts

Posted 03/09/2010 8:26 pm

Aluminium is an unusual coinage metal in that it is "amphoteric", meaning that it reacts with alkalis in much the same way as acids - bubbling, etc. As I understand it, this "MS70" stuff is a strong detergent dissolved in an acetone/water mixture. It's probably pretty alkaline. I do know that the conventional advice, "soap and water is mostly harmless to coins", does NOT apply to aluminium, for this reason.

MS70 is intended for the American market, and America doesn't have any aluminium coins - so it probably never occurred to the manufacturer that anyone would try to clean an aluminium object with their product.

It's easy to be a saint in paradise. - Captain Sisko, "Star Trek"

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