Cleaning Coins With Acetone.

Agreed.

So maybe acetone is not harmful to get on your skin for a short time, but are there any particular kinds of coin tongs that you could use instead to lower the coin into the acetone and retrieve it? I see some coin tongs have rubber or plastic covered tips, which probably are not compatible with the acetone, do they make tongs that are all metal, have not seen them? Thanks!

Ant killer, "silver paper" and water....sounds quite professional. You must work for NCS.

This is true, which is why I chose not to have a heart attack when he posted that.

On BadThad's advice from previous posts, I now use xylene when soaking copper which works better.

Given enough soakage time, acetone will remove almost anything organic,
but will not touch any inorganics, such as silver/copper oxides/sulfides, which are responsible for good or bad toning, good or blotchy patination.

It must be remembered that some acidic oraganic substances, such as the natural oils in your skin, are capable of forming insoluble in anything complex organic/metallic compounds, which become part of a coin's surface. This is how non removable fingerprints can be formed.
Exposure to airborne cooking fat vapors (also acidic), are pretty much disastrous to coins as well.

If you don't think that your fingers are naturally greasy, try a little experiment.
Put a couple of dilute drops of caustic soda liquid on your fingers. A reaction happens, where the skin oils combine with the the hydroxide radicals (OH-), to form a natural soap. Most soaps are very slightly basic (ph+) anyway. That is why your hands feel clean after washing them in soap and water.

I am not a fanatic about gloves, when handling coins. In fact, I don't use them at all.
I just was my hands thoroughly, and have found that is perfectly good enough, over my decades of experience in handling coins.

Thank you Sel_691 and Condor101

Your comments and advise are greatly appreciated

This is a very common question you are asking. You should never improperly clean your coins. Using acetone or soap and water, if done correctly, will not render your coin improperly cleaned.

In almost every scenario, using any type of cloth or rag to clean your coin will leave it improperly cleaned because there will be hairline scratches. Some will advise using a q-tip, but this can be risky and leave hairline scratches if there is any foreign substance there. Also, using acetone on copper has been known to permanently affect the surface.

The experts hopefully will correct me if I am wrong on any of this.

Edited to add: when the advise is given to never clean your coins, the "improperly" part is implied. And most inexperienced collectors will always clean using a rag of some kind, so this will always create hairline scratches and visible evidence which cause the coin to be ungradeable and often unsellable.