Sorry But Did You Say You Cleaned My Coin.

Too often cleaning just means to make shiny by removing toning. In a sub AU coin that's just be like dyeing a old mans hair black and thinking he will look youthful. Coin wear is like wrinkles you aren't going to remove them and they just become more obvious with their aged toning missing.

Now if you got dirt or something green (PVC) on your face please remove it just don't go sanding your features off hehe

Stacker82 Don't use baking soda; it will scratch the coin. The scratches will be really tiny but we examine coins with magnifying lenses and we'll see them.

Soap and tap water have pH issues to consider. Most cleaning solutions are acidic and not nice to metal.

If you were to use a damp cotton swab, you'll just end up dragging whatever grit that is on the coin from one place to another - some, maybe all, of the grit will come off, but it would be easy to scratch the coin that way. Imagine trying to remove some dirt from between devices WITHOUT touching the top of those devices and scratching them.

I was a refinisher for 5 years before the Navy, and we used Acetone to clean everything because it evaporated so quick and didn't leave any residue hanging around. To clean a coin with Acetone, seeing what it did to spray guns and such, I just couldn't do it, it would remove the luster, my believe anyways. It's also kind of funny when ya go in to buy some coins and they'll sell ya whatever, but when ya go in and sell to them, they bust out the whole microscope and point out this little nick, that is naked to the human eye and just the damage to the coin... I'm thinking in my head, is this guy seirous? I S you not, I had a tube of 10th oz gold eagle's, I handed the guy 4 and he passed one back saying it was circulated.... circulated, like I carried the thing in my pocket. Anyways a few months later I went back in and handed him the same coin, nothing was mentioned. That's when I knew these guys don't know, they're are a lot of car salesmen in this line of work. Anyways, the store I had tried to just establish a relationship with lost my business today... over what I consider shady work. Who would've known when the guy was plunking his morgan down in a poker game that the dust occurred on the coin from the pocket of his, would makethat coin desireable, even if the providence of that coin wasn't even known.

I guess I'm not explaining it well at all, go rub an ASE in the dirt and see what happens to the value. Go take your peace or Morgan and people don't say a word, even though it was just put on the coin... it's "ancient" dirt, but there's no providence! I could see paying more for some coin a famous general road around with that he thought was giving him luck and there was paperwork to go with it. But one lowers the value, a dirty ASE, and one doesn't neccesarrily lower the value, a dirty Morgan. A morgan in 90% an ASE or Maple... One was made over 100 years ago, one rises and falls with the price of silver, the other remains at a steady price. After 6 years of collecting, learning, stacking, whatever you wanna call it, to me silver is silver. I started out thinking that an MS64 deserved those extra bucks that an MS63 didn't give you. But after knowing how the process is done, and seeing some pretty darn shotty MS63's encapsulated by NGC, I gotta tell ya, my preference and my preference only is I will gladly pay the $30 for a dirty coin as opposed to some $800 coin of the same mint and year because it's shinier... so in the end, shinier is better, not the dirt in between the letters. what makes a coin valueable is what somene is willing to pay for it. I'll make a 2.6 gram sterling silver charm and charge $15. Anyways I'm probably all over the place in this message. Tanks.

Ben! My brother from another mother... I feel the same way. It just does not click in my head. There's certain things where wear is good... say a broken in old glove for baseball, or broken in new pair of shoes, but silver is shiny... and obviously shiny is worth more since the shiny morgans in good shape get a higher score. But if it's cleaned up a bit and the dirt taken off, to see more shiny than dirt... well then the value goes down. I've been explained the process of grading coins and they look at your coin for about 8 seconds and pass it off to the next person to grade. I get, the appeal of having a morgan, they're beautiful (or whatever you collect) I just personally have around 70 Morgans... none that I've cleaned, because I want to retain their value. Anyways, I'm not trying to convince anyone, or change anyone's mind, just bringing up a topic I thought of because when I visited a pawn shop the other day... the ugliest "Walking Liberty" 1 oz'ers were $30 and tax, I mean ugly... but EVERY morgan was $25... they've had those "Walking Liberty's" for months, heck, probably longer. Anyhoo, thanks for the discussion everyone!

Any dirtfisherman on here?

No, it will not. Not on its own...

Soaking and rinsing a coin in acetone.

Rubbing a coin with an acetone soaked cloth.