Love It Or Clean It?

How good are you at cleaning them? I think it should be cleaned by someone who knows how to do it right without causing damage. It looks like a nice coin.
John1

I personally have had little luck mechanically cleaning this type of encrustation. Having said that, I would try soaking this coin in olive oil for 3 months to a couple of years. The coin has good detail that you may see get better and more clear:) Check on the coin every month or so and change the oil every 6 months or so.

Of course the coin is attributable as is so you may want to leave it as is. Nice coin!

After soaking a few hours in EDTA solution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethyle...aacetic_acid
I did not expect all the green to come off so easily. I believed there was enough silver showing that the EDTA would loosen the green enough I could pick off the distracting ones but it dissolved them all. I would not use EDTA on a copper coin with green patina because, as pointed out above, you never know what is between the green and the copper. In this case, I was hoping that the silver would protect the copper. I do not recommend you try it and guarantee that you will ruin some coins if you do. There is also the question of safety which I decided was worth the risk considering what I read but you need to do that yourself and don't eat the stuff.



The illustration above shows several things I found interesting about the coin. The left inset shows where the copper color has been exposed in the cheek. Comparing to the 'before' photo I suspect that the wear occurred after the coin was found in modern times since there is no green on the cheek. Someone may have rubbed it against something when first found? I see no wear on the coin but it can no longer be called mint state. Its worst feature is illustrated by the two insets at the right. The far right shows a captive fully struck up and detailed just as it should be. The second one from the right shows the other captive flatly struck but fully silvered. There is no wear but the hammerman just did not hit it hard and straight enough to transfer all the die detail. This reduces the value of the coin and keeps it from being a high dollar item. My middle inset shows the mintmark PXXT which is why I wanted the coin in the first place.

Ticinum mint was different from the other mints that used XXI to indicate an alloy ration of 20 parts copper to one part silver. Ticinum only used XX replacing the I with a T for Ticinum. The P indicates it was made by the first (Primus) workshop. I have other coins of Ticinum from the third shop that read TXXT and people ask how we can tell the first T is the shop while the last T is the city. This coin answers that question. It is often the case that you can not study one coin at a time but need to look at thousands issued over a period of time and places to see patterns that make the inscriptions make sense. This is a decent but not perfect example of a very common coin well worth the $21. Whether you think my cleaning increased that or not is a matter of opinion. People who like silver might say it is now $40 while someone out there probably liked it better before.

Once again you have proven me wrong, my friend. The cleaned coin is much better. And to think I recommended leaving it alone. Hmmm, makes a case for not listening to me, eh?

I was going to say leave the coin as it was, but after seeing the results after you cleaned it all I can say is wow. Great results.

dougsmit,

The details of the coin was great with the heavy green patina, but after the cleaning job, looks much better.
You never know till you clean it, sometimes they don't come out this good....

Really great work and attribution Doug!