Wearing Gloves When Handling Coins

Good question! I only use the cotton gloves and then only with BU's and Proofs so they don't soil as quickly as if I used them for circulated coins. I have several pair and they really haven't gotten soiled but, if they did I would throw them in the laundry (cold dryer so they won't shrink).

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Originally posted by gxseries

I'm not too sure about the idea of latex gloves. Who knows, if people are allegic to latex, there might be some types of alloys that are more sensitive to it and might cause unwanted reaction.

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Good point, and worth considering.

I am blessed, or cursed, with hands which do not sweat. It's difficult for me to even hold cardboard at all, and I don't leave fingerprints on glass. As a result, I (yes, I know this is blasphemy) tend to handle my coins bare-handed. Of course, I handle even circulated examples by the rims only, but the tactile sensation of being in direct contact with the coin is irreplaceable.

I guess if I owned anything truly valuable it might be different.

If it came to it, I would use cotton exclusively, and cotton only gets better with wear and repeated washings.

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Originally posted by Jim Biggs

Repeat after me. I hate gloves, I hate slabs, I hate gloves, I hate slabs. Unfortunately, they are a necessary evil on the really good ones. I love the feel of a good coin in my hand. That is why I carry an old beat to death Morgan in my pocket everyday. I guess handling it fills the need. Oh, for me it is only cotton.
Jim

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Funny you mention carrying an old beat Morgan in your pocket. I do this with a ASE, and it satisfies my need to touch my precious coins.

Im not so aure about latex either. Cotton works for me just fine though.

Andrew

We always use cotton gloves on coins that grade AU or better. We believe cotton to be the best choice and laundry them as needed.
Also when a person handles a coin, that person should hold the coin out in front of him. When anyones talks there may be a small amount of salavia that may exits the mouth ( we all are very well groomed people but it does happen to almost everyone). Salavia is more destructive to a coins finish that fingerprints.

Our coin club went on a visit to the local university's antiquities museum, which, though fairly small, has one of the best public collections of ancient coins in the state. We had a "hands-on" session after the tour, and everyone was issued with cotton gloves - museum policy for handling all their artefacts.

Now, it may seem strange to some folks that coins which were minted 2000 years ago, buried in the ground for most of the intervening time, dug up, cleaned and then shipped off to a museum on the far side of the planet would need careful handling. Still, rules are rules - and if visitors like us mishandled them, the museum wouldn't have much to display in a couple of generations.

Personally, I don't normally use gloves when handling coins. If I did, reusable, washable cotton gloves sound like the way to go. If disposable gloves are desired, latex may not be the best choice - latex is loaded with sulfur, and who knows what's in the powder they use; a latex smear could be nearly as bad as a fingerprint on a mint state coin, in the long term. I'd probably prefer the powderless "nitrile" gloves we use in the chem lab at work. Polyacrylonitrile is chemically inert, though it is more expensive. It's also a lot safer than it's other name (polyvinyl cyanide) would tend to imply - just don't set them on fire when you're done handling your coins. Hydrogen cyanide is rarely fun.

I love the feeling of handling my coins directly. That said, however, I would always use cotton gloves if I was handling a proof or a valuable uncirculated coin.

Cottonelle because it's so sqeezably soft.