Coin Cleaning Or Polishing?

As a cardinal rule never clean or polish any coins. It may make them look shiny and all polished but they will decrease immensely in value..

Do not clean the coins!

Hey Cajunlady0 these might help you....

This is a good guide on prices..
http://www.numismedia.com/fmv/fmv.shtml

And you can use this to give you a ballpark on grades...
http://www.pcgs.com/photograde/

Thanks for all the info. I noticed a few of my Buffalo nickels are like etched in black. This drives me nuts! The only thing I keep remembering is when I used to buy coins or see them for sale on ebay, I saw none dirty looking like that. I guess women just want to clean things.

I am sure that none are worth much money (since all were found in circulated change over the years), but I justed wanted to make them more presentable in the flips I am putting them in.

Guess I will have to get used to them the way they are... which bothers the heck out of me.

Thanks again for all the "consistent" feedback. I won't be cleaning them....I promise!

They are your coins and you can do whatever you want to them whether it be clean them, polish them, paint them, drill holes in them, whatever.

HOWEVER if you want to keep them for the sake of gaining or holding any type of value then you should not clean them and leave them as is.

That being said I have 2 1917 Type 1 SLQ's on my desk that I rub together, bounce of the desk, etc when I get board as a stress relief / nervous twitch / ADD / alien mind implant thing. Are they worth less now than when I got them? Maybe, but that is fine with me because they are my coins.

For cleaning, polishing, etc. I do the following:
1. All Copper coins get dipped in Battery Acid, then held to a brass wire wheel on a bench grinder that turns at about 1,850 RPM.
2. All Silver coins are dipped in Jewlery Cleaners from Walmart. Left there for approximately one year + or - a few hours.
4. After all that all coins are placed in a Rock Tumbler with fine sand and run for another few seconds to one month.

PLEASE IGNOR THE ABOVE.

You should just do a search on this forum using the Search tab for this subject. Try searching for coin cleaning, claening coins, Acetone and any other similar topics
If you ever watch the Antique Raod Show on TV the one really important thing you hear constantly is "If this hadn't of been cleaned, it would be worth many, many times what it now is worth"
Although most old items, coins for a great example, look rather dirty, discolored, dull, almost icky, they still shouldn't be attempted to be cleaned.

Buffaloes (the coins, that is), can become quite dirty looking. The dark tarnish in most cases, is caused by either sulphides or chlorides of copper and nickel. They can be impossible to remove without further damage to the coin. It is for this reason that coins are better off with the tarnish remaining.

I can't really tell you why buffaloes are a bit more prone to this; the alloy is the same as for other issues.

You just have to accept the fact that that some of them are so scungy.


BTW, reading your posts is a rather interesting experience. I am reading them with an Australian accent! Work that out!

And because I can never just go witht he crowd...

Polishing or cleaning as in wiping or abrasives, NO, of course not. Now, dipping a coin to remove nasty dark tarnish, certainly, no problem. You obviously dont want to bath the coin for minutes on end in dip, but severaal secnds, not a big deal. Though do not do this for copper coins. It tends to turn them funky colors.