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

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!