When Your Coins Look Like This.. How To Clean Them?

Hi svslav, per your question - dremel wire wheel is a 3/4" diameter brush wheel on a hand held spindle and drivemotor, rotating at 5,000rpm other models at 10,000rpm. I use it (nylon brush/10,000rpm) on conddemed and hopeless coins with black tar encrustation result of being submerged in tropical rivers.

It has to be used with a 6x-8x magnifying glass and a very steady hand. It's a trade off between having an untradable coin that is black, unreadable, unknown metal disc and an untradable coin that is cleaned, shiny coin of known metal but with microscopic and faint scratches on it's surface. it's a last case move before throwing the coin in the trash bucket. hope that info helps

Eurocoin, I've never heard of the ketchup bath solution. Sounds interesting and worth a try, at least a test.

To make a short story longer, here are a pile of coins that have been through extensive cleaning processes for numerous reasons.

Hopefully the photo is clear enough. All of these coins were really a mess for Numismatic purposes. Some, the Nickel, were highly polished with something that made them look like mirrors. Same with the SLQ but not as shinny. All the Cents were covered with dirt, grime, corrosions of who knows what. The Large cent was the worst since it was so corroded it was noticably potted with holes.
As a starter all of these were placed in Acetone in a glass jar individually of course. Then the Nickels were placed in laquer thinner. All for just a few minutes. These did very little except the Nickels did tone down somewhat. After this these were individually placed in Alcohol, then rinsed in hot distilled water and now all dunked into a baking soda/distilled water solution and very, very lightly rubbed. This process strectched out for several weeks a little at a time. Finally all were starting to look a bit like normal ocoins to some degree. Then finally all were placed in a glass jar, left on a picnic table in my yard where the Sun could hit it most of the day. Finally a few days ago all were taken out and placed on a kitchen window sill and this is the final results.
Note for some reason the Large Cent turned Red. Not just a slight Red, but a real Red. The Nickels came out the best so far I think except I'm really proud of the SLQ's results. One of the Cents really still looks bad.
Remember that cleaning coins is not a intelligent thing to do normally but these were really already ruined at the beginning.

"Reverse psychology" can sometimes have dire, unpredictable results.
No doubt, when we warned that guy NOT to clean his 1871 IHC, we actually encouraged him to Dremel his coin to oblivion.

The reason stuff like Ketchup does work to a degree is it contains an acid. You could get those results from Lemon Juice, Lime Juice, Vinegar or any product that contains an acid. Acetone is not intended to be an acidic substance but many, many items we eat are acidic. Note the color of Tomatoes. The redder they are the more acidic they are which is why so many now have turned to yellow, orange and even white tomatoes. The less red, the less acid.
The worse thing about using Ketchup on coins is you may end up placing that coin on a burger and eating it.

Here is a good site! lots of tips

http://metaldetectingworld.com/clea...n_coin.shtml

Ketchup does work, but it will completely strip the coin. They may get "red-looking," but will have absolutely no mint luster, and have a dull shine. I've used it on a few ugly copper lincolns, and have decided that it's not worth it. It MIGHT be worth it on a foreign coin, just to bring out an interesting design.

Joe