Would Verdicare Help This Poor Large Cent?

Thanks for that tip - I will make sure I get this.



I just wish I could know what this little gem has seen and what in the world the story behind the green gunk is.

Hopefully be getting the oil soon.

I just thought - would a pre-soak in maybe just water with a mild dish detergent be OK? I do not know if dish detergent has anything that can react to the copper - I would think not - but I do not want to ruin this worse than it is. But wouldn't it be great to find this gunk is water soluble? Anyone with experience?

Thanks for that info also. I emailed Bad Thad about this to see what he thinks also.

Thanks Bad Thad - I really appreciate your helping out.

Having personally used VERDI-CAREâ„¢, I can recommend it for this coin. I have never used olive oil on a coin, but knowing how it it works, I cannot recommend its use.

I share with you all an excerpt from my book:

The problems with using EVO are many fold:

• The acid-verdigris reaction process proceeds very slowly. The mobility of the free protons in an oil solution is very low. Just imagine if you dropped cork balls into a jar of water and into a jar of oil and then shook them side-by-side. In the water solution the ball would rapidly more around as you shook it. It the oil solution the ball would barely be moving as you shook it. This is why it can take months of soaking even a lightly infected verdigris coin in EVO before results are seen.
• EVO is natural so it degrades and goes rancid. Over a period of time the oil will oxidize and spoil as bacteria eat away at it and grow. It must be replaced frequently with fresh oil or the spoiled EVO may cause harm to the coin surface. The complex organic degradation products could prove to be quite harmful.
• The chemical composition and acids levels are inconsistent. Being a natural product, there is a lot of variation in the acidity, ingredients and contaminants. A bottle that has worked for the conservation of one coin may not be exactly the same in the next bottle.
• Acids are very corrosive to copper and the oil will solubilize some of the natural brown patina that has developed on a copper coin. Working together, both of these mechanisms may alter the coins appearance and may even permanently destroy the surface by pitting it.

FINALLY located this cent again and followed the direction CAREFULLY on the Verdi-Care bottle.
edited for following:

I shoud have read through this thread before treating it with Verdi-Care the other day. BadThad said a 24 hour soak, which I did not do. I guess this means it should go back in for 24 hours? BadThad?


Original pics:




Post Verdi-Care pics.





I am not happy with the pics - I need to get them in sunlight like the original ones.

OK- it is better - but now what? How do I get rid of the remaining gunk? Another application of Verdi-Care for a longer period?

Yeah, Verdichem would help get some of that verdiris off if you know how to use it. Obviously, there is some corrosion that it wont solve, but I imagine much of that stuff MIGHT come off. But this is a common date large cent, and probably not worth the time.

OK - got better pics this morning using sunlight - this time it shows actual coloring instead of the coloring in the last pics: