Ultrasonic Cleaner - Before And After

of course, acetone it very flammable and evaporative and will disappear pretty soon.

Be careful!

Thanks for documenting your works. It's fun to see how different compositions treated the same way evolve in a visually stimulating manner. This is just fantastic.

This is a really interesting topic, and a service to the Forum. However, for those of less experience reading, a caveat is in order:

It's very likely that no coin treated this way will ever grade at a TPG. In most cases the signs of unnatural cleaning will be obvious, as nalaberong has drawn attention to in his writeup. For this reason, this technique is of relevance only with dug coins, Ancients and coins which obviously won't grade anyway.

I have never tried BamaBlue's technique but it rings true to the knowledge I already have. An alternative would be a good acetone soak to start loosening things, followed by the ultrasound in normal configuration. The only other addition I would offer is that acetone itself always be your final rinse, as it evaporates instantly without trace. No drying. That way, part of your rinse routine can be to run it under tap water at full pressure if you wish, further helping the cleaning routine.

But the bottom line is, always consider whether or not you should be doing this with any coin. You owe it to those who follow you as guardians of the coin, and to history.

I wonder if using Verdi-Care would help even more on coins with verdigris and green gunk?

Why would that be?

Since no abrasives are used how would one know the coin was run through an ultrasonic cleaner. Would the ultrasonic cleaner leave any sort of marks on the coin?

Look at the coins under microscope and you will see the pits left from the corrosion being shaken off. Now if you jsut have a coin so corroded it must be cleaned to save its aesthetics, then this would be good, or for dug coins. The corrosion layer is actually protecting the metal beneath from worse damage and when you expose the fresh clean pitted coins to the elements again they can become worse than they were quicker.

Quicker being if it was in the ground for 100 years to look that way it might only take 50 years or just 20 to look worse than it was form the ground.

I have only done ultrasonic jewelry cleaner on Roosevelt dimes because they are silver mostly and all went well but you can tell they were cleaned under scrutiny. The fact there is strange toning and not toning under spots cleaned is a good way to tell a coin was cleaned...or improperly stored. When someone sees that I would think they would look closer, then closer at the coin.

Since I collect circulated coins, AND they are my coins, not likely to se the light of day until I die, but for MY enjoyment, I clean what I want and don't care about grades.

Just put a wheat in ultrasonic jewelry cleaner for my mother and it went from green to faded copper. but she liked it. to each their own as far as cleaning goes, but it does do damage to the metal in the long run and will cause ALL coins to decay quicker.

If you look at it realistically, this is about the most intrusive technology which does absolutely nothing to the metal of a coin. It is only in the visibility of the results where one finds fault with the process. Often, with the right candidate coins, it is the appropriate procedure to ensure the best numismatic future for them.

An important consideration when using methods like this (and certain others) is that you are creating "fresh" surfaces for corrosion to feed upon. The resulting coins will need positive protection.

Yeah, like that, but I want to hear what Thad thinks of the specific usage.