Does This Barber Half Look Like A Tarn-X Victim To You?

The expression I like to use is... "dipped to death"...

Coin took an acetone bath before I took the last set of images. It's Friday night and I'm feeling like a rebel, so going for a quick shot at Tarn-X cleaning. I'll post pics of outcome soon.

Weeellll, there's always Turtle Wax!



note: ebay trick #27...

And the results are in, pictures tell the story. Coin on left is before, coin on right is after:




The carbon spots, black sulfide and some staining couldn't be removed, but the results are a huge improvement. First of all, I put on thick rubber gloves since the stuff says it causes cancer in people in California, and I'm not that far away over in Texas.

After setting up an acetone bath and 5 layer facial tissue beds to lay coins on, I just used Tarn-X soaked cotton balls to directly touch the coins, no swabbing or side movements. Tarn-X'd with soaked cotton ball on each side for around 5 seconds and then direct rinse with running hot water (I have a whole house water softener and carbon filter btw), then a very light press-dry with facial tissue.

Repeated that exact process 3 times on each side of coin, no more than 5 seconds or so of tarn-X contact per side (with fresh cotton ball soaked with Tarn-X), rinse and facial tissue press-dry, repeated 3 times. Finished off the cleaning with an acetone bath to displace any residual Tarn-X and water.

It was worth a shot since the coin was trashed. It looks acceptable, but definitely not a candidate for TPG.

I like Tarn-X but I think it's like cutting my own hair. I think I can cut a little more off, until I'm giving myself a crew-cut because I went too far. So be careful with the Tarn-X, if you decide to use it.

Thanks to Crazyb0 for the inspiration, and thanks for all of the warnings from everyone!

I am staggered by the result. Frankly, the only thing that stopped me from giving you a piece of my mind yesterday for even suggesting the use of Tarn-X on a coin was the fact that I'd then have to ban myself for having said it.

So, what was on the coin was not the result of a previous overdipping, but a coating/patina of some sort which your operation removed. An overdipped coin simply_cannot recover luster as yours did. Not possible. Therefore, some of what we were seeing is a caution about forming conclusions too complete from images - they did not tell the truth about what was happening with the coin.

However, that caution also applies to the "after" set of images. This is still almost certainly a "Details" coin; it's just a far more appealing Details coin now.

Your technique went a long way towards ensuring your success.

I will still advise anyone reading not to employ Tarn-X in the treatment of any coin; in this case I suspect you'd have been equally served by the use (with similar technique) of thiourea, with fewer active ingredients which may or may not have interacted unfavorably with whatever was on the coin.

You got lucky. And that's not a viable retirement plan for anyone. If a random person uses this technique another ten times on various coins, they will almost certainly completely destroy at least eight of them.

And that's the problem with using techniques this invasive on coins - not that they do not sometimes work, but that they usually do not work in the worst-possible fashion, and there's no way of knowing beforehand what the outcome will be.

But looking at this coin makes my arguments appear hollow, however accurate they may be.

Wow! That is absolutely incredible, the coin looks perfectly original! Congrats on the success!

I don't recommend that ANYONE who doesn't know precisely what they're doing even attempt to clean a classical era coin. I didn't improve the coin's value, I just spiffed it up a bit. But if the Tarn-x had done more damage than good (as I've read that it often does, which is why I started this thread in the first place), I probably would've given the coin to the neighbor kids as a show and tell object to take to school. Most coin dealers, graders, and many of the fine folks on the Community Coin Forum can spot a cleaned coin a mile away, myself included.

So if you want to see if you can improve your coin's appearance, try an acetone bath, nothing more. And if you're going to use acetone, do it someplace like a bathroom with an exhaust fan, or outside, wear LDPE gloves (not rubber gloves like I said in my 3rd post), don't breath the fumes and don't smoke or have a spark/flame source anywhere near your work area. Acetone is highly flammable and the fumes can readily travel to an ignition source. You can bet that people have burned their houses down when improperly storing or using acetone. So really, if you're a novice collector or if you're not aware of the characteristics of organic solvents, just use distilled water, or don't mess with the coins at all since your "Dirty coin" might be worth a lot more than a "clean coin".

Holy smoke doctor Jones!