Mint State Restoration Coin Cleaner

NO, NO, NO, NO!

Try distilled water first. You can try olive oil later if you want to. You can't use DW if you have used OO first.

If you need to use electrolysis or other chemical blasting agents to get it out of your system, then go ahead.

Personally, when I get my hands on a dirty old coin, it has been in the ground undiscovered for around 1700 years. I feel an obligation to try and preserve as much of it as I can. OK they can turn out to be blanks or culls, but sometimes you can pick up a peach. I posted what had been a blank brown disc which I had soaked for months. All of a sudden, I started to see details and I ended up with a lovely coin still with it's silver wash intact. That would all have been lost if I had done it differently.

Google cleaning ancients. There is a lot of conflicting information. Metal detectorists like to use electrolysis because they want to know what they have found. Very few of them really care about ancient coins.

It is easy. Small plastic container. Put in coins, pour in DW and leave them alone. Give them a shake every now and then. Only when the water turns cloudy should you change it. All coins are different, it depends on where they spent the last 1700 years or so. Take out, use an old toothbrush to give them a good brush. Rinse, dry on paper towel. Replace the DW if it needs it. Repeat until you are satisfied that they coin will not clean any futher.

I would only put in 2 or 3 coins in a small container (I have lots of pots on the go).

If you feel that you need to give this blasting stuff a go, then do so, but keep some of the coins to put in DW so you can compare the fast way with the "proper" way.

Coin with good patina = pop pop had a wow collection
Coin blasted to metal = oh dear pop pop

As far as picks go. I started out using thorns from a rose bush. They were rubbish! You should start by using toothpicks before you progress to dental picks. They can be expensive if you don't have someone in the profession who can get you them for trade, they don't last forever.

I have used a brass brush, they are supposed to "not hurt the patina", well I found that they could, so I don't use them any more. When I say "an old toothbrush" I bought a couple from the supermarket for the purpose.

Once you have got a bit of cleaning under your belt, then you can progress to using more lethal products like the dental picks and in my case a scalpel.

I also use a stereo-microscope so that I can see what I am doing.

I've never heard of this one and have no idea what chemicals are being used. I would avoid using it and stick to the distilled water or Olive oil methods. I prefer Olive oil but it does tend to darken the color of the coin.

denco, with my purchase of this magical stuff, he is sending me 5 uncleaned coins along with it and at least one I will try and let you know the results.

Pish, I plan on it. I plan on conducting it as a scientific experiment. LOL!

Ben, I lost all my gardening soil testing equipment, so I probably will not be able to test the PH level. Since summer is gone here, I might have a hard time finding the equipment to test the PH unless I get it offline. But I could send a small sample to my local extension agency for them to test it.

What kind of buffer to neutralize the acid would you suggest?