I Clean My Coins!

Occasionally I will use a little dish soap and water on an especially dirty coin. Is "washing" a coin the same as "cleaning" a coin? Does a gentle wash do any harm to either the coin or the value?

I have used MS70. I've not used it on silver (as I own so little of it anyway). I have used it on really common inexpensive coins to get the dirt off. I tried it once on an aluminum coin. Oh, what a disaster that was. The thing started sizzling. it was quite fascinating actually. the coin after was potted and really in bad shape. It was an inexpensive experiment gone bad!

something just carl mentioned about getting smaller dollars for cleaned coins. You know that may be true if the buyer is a seasoned collector but I tell you there are a lot of cleaned coins going for plenty of dollars on ebay to someone who obviously has a hole to fill! the cleaning does not seem to detract from getting a lot of dollars for it, relative to krause catalog (and I do know they can be way off).

I really don't think that a distilled water or an acetone rinse is "cleaning" your coins. Mitchhailey, you seem concerned about this. Don't the professional grading services use acetone as well?

I use acetone and distilled water on the ones I'm putting into my 7113. It's amazing how dirty they can be even when they look clean.

Unfortuately your absolutely correct. People that just don't know buy cleaned coins all the time. People buy cars with all sorts of problems too and find out the hard way. People take medicines that are supposed to cure Cancer and sometimes die from Cancer.
Regardless or the situation, again, your right. However, that is usually for only average coins. Once they get into a little more on the expensive side, most look into that cleaning stuff. And again your right and many get taken by pretty, cleaned, shinny coins. They are all learning but you just can't educate the entire world.



Just one of the typical things people shouldn't use on coins. If you look up cleaning coins on this forums Search tab, you'ld probable run into a lot of reasons not to do that. For one thing there are numersous different types of dish soaps and some will actually discolor a coin horribly. And as to water. There is as many differences in water as in air. If your using tap water, it could contain almost anything possible to be in water. Chlorine, Flourine, Iron Salts, Sodium Salts and no one really knows what is in your piping system.
Spend a dollar and get some distilled water.

I mainly collect world silver and gold. I find with 50% silver up to pure 999 if you must clean and I admit I do with cheaper bullion class coins I use tin foil in a dish boiling water to cover the coins and sprinkle Bi-Carb soda over them. They clean to a beautiful finish with the chemical reaction. No silver is lost, then rinse. No good for copper, bronze. Try with a cheap worn dirty silver coin.

One of the locals around here uses MS70, if I remember correctly, diluted with water. I know he told me it was not full strength. He basically uses it as a dip for silver coins. From what I have seen it works pretty well. I ordered some MS70. Gonna experiment with some crusty old junk 90% coins. Its junk silver, what can it hurt.

I use q-tips but you have to be careful. It is possible to press a worn q-tip hard enough against the coin that the center stick which the cotton is wrapped on will scratch the coin. Ask me how I learned that lesson way back when! You can easily get swirl marks on the coin. Let the cotton fluff a bit and just let it glide over the surface. Most of the oils should dissolve pretty easy and all you're doing is agitating them off. Just think of the PSI the coin feels on the tiny tip of the center stick if you press too hard. It's like chewing food. Do you know how many PSI are exerted on your teeth? Yikes!

-- Boris