Jackpot! :-)

Thanks for cleaning your coins. It makes mine more valuable.

No problem. Glad to assist.

Jbuck, well said.

Leave coin cleaning to the professionals:


Your example is exactly the reason why "don't clean your coins" is the rule.

You have a nice painted car, except for some road grime and maybe bug stickum. Would it be OK to brighten it up a bit by taking a handful of gravel in water and polishing it down to the shiny original metal?

If you're looking at me like I'm crazy, consider the relative size of a coin and a car hood. Magnify the coin surface a few hundred times so they're equal, and that's exactly what the scratches from baking soda will look like. Heck, it'll grind the crud off your teeth, what'll you think it will do to soft silver or copper?

I'll betcha nickel you weren't talking about making a paste and letting the coin sit in it, then washing it off in running water, were you? No, you were gonna grind away and polish the coin's surface. Polish is another term for tiny scratches reflecting light. Take a magnifier to a polished piece of silverware if you doubt me.

Your suggestion is worse than tarn-x. Tarn-x reacts chemically with the coin surface, baking soda scratches it. A more obvious version (actually recommended in the 50s) is the scratches left by an eraser. One day, a customer spent a couple hours in a coin dealer's parking lot, "cleaning" his coins before selling them. Guess he figured the dealer couldn't afford his own eraser.

I'm glad I wasn't the one who had to tell him he erased $10,000 worth of collector value an hour.

Only if you consider oxygen that has bonded to the Ag as "the surface". It wasn't there when the coins were made. Nature added it afterwards.



Therein lies the value of owning bullion coins and not numismatic coins. My coins have little to no numismatic value, so if I cut their numismatic value in half via some VERY careful cleaning, so be it. I can afford the penny or two lost on each one.

True, the O[sub]2[/sub] wasn't there, but the Ag was. When you break the bond that created the tarnish, what happens to the silver? If you wonder, take a look in a used jar of Jewlustre.

That's exactly why you need to examine all older date morgans and silver coins that look in to be in better condition. a percentage of people out there will always been looking at Bullion coins as just that, a piece of metal with very little regard to the date. Some are investors, some are collectors.

I'm an avid collector with a huge interest in the history behind the coin. I love the fact that a coin has possibly over 100 years of wear from the people of those times. A shame a bit of Tarn-X destroys that.