Large Collection Ruined?

The good news is most of those should be able to be salvaged. The bad news is you're going to have to pay up to get it done because it will require methods where you could easily make them worse if you don't know what you're doing.

Your cheapest method to get them conserved will be to call ICG in Tampa Fl and see if you can work out a deal for them to conserve them and they'll probably want to grade them as well. That would be the most cost effective and give you a good idea of what would be worth sending to PCGS after that if you were interested in selling, if you didn't want to sell then the ICG holders would be much more stable than how they have been stored.

PCGS and NGC would be your other more expensive options. Their grading opinions are valued more but they also cost more and would very likely be extremely cost prohibitive to the point of not being able to afford it for a large group of coins for grading and conservation. If you find some better dates that you know are more valuable it wouldn't be a bad idea to send those to PCGS or NGC while sending the lower valued stuff to ICG.

Others will mention ANACS, but in my opinion they wouldn't be worth using. Their conservation work is fine, they just generally don't select very many things to conserve and you'll get a lot back in the exact same shape you sent them in with grades you won't be happy about.

Whoever you choose not all of them will be conserved, but if you you do want to have them conserved pay someone else to do it.

Gramps - why don't you post the rest of your coins on here. I would like to see what other goodies you were left. No reason to be glum. You have a nice group of Morgans even though some may not be as "pretty" as they once were. They are still a nice group.

No need to apologize! We are always here to help.

By the way, you found it before you replied. It was in the main forum, I moved to the the US Classic forum to fit the coins you have posted. Everything stays the same expect where it shows up in the topic list.

Here are more examples. It seems every coin with a nice finish has corrosion and the coins in just ok shape have none. So basically all the nice examples got ruined. One of the halves in the picture had a tare in the plastic and you can see that it tarnished right along that line. As I said in the original post I believe a large amount of this collection is just ruined relative to what they originally were. It's heartbreaking. The more I pull out and look at the worse it gets. I haven't even looked at the pennies yet, I'm sure they fared worse.

Gramps76,

I'd think long and hard about trying to do restoration/conservation work on your own. IMHO, it's best left to experts who do it for a living. Coins, like any collectable, can be severely damaged by well meaning people who lack the expertise, skills and equipment to do the job properly.

I recommend that you stick with fixing the storage issues and then take the coins to a local dealer (or two if possible), if you have one.

Any legitimate dealer should be willing to look at the coins, provide advice on whether or not conservation is needed and worthwhile, and even make an offer on the coins if you're interested in one. Depending upon the volume of coins, some dealers may want to charge an appraisal fee, and others won't. Ask first about any fees.

I know all of the advice you're now getting from folks you don't know from Adam (myself included) can be/is confusing, but my advice is to err on the side of caution. Do what you can without doing any further damage to the coins, show them to some dealers to get some "live" information and advice, and then make your decisions without rushing into anything.

Best of Luck!

You've received tremendous response to your questions and comments. I'm just proud to be a tiny part of such a tremendous forum. Ill be keeping my eyes open for more threads from you.

Please note that almost all replies are based on value. What I mean is everyone keeps saying how you'll probably ruin those coins value wise. Since your not looking to sell them, their value is not important. To you it's appearance and just something to remember someone by. My suggestion is to just go to Walmart and buy some jewelry cleaner. It will get rid of stuff like those dark spots on anything Silver. HOWEVER, first look up the coins value. If it is a highly valuable coin, cleaning it is really not a good idea. Only for someone in the future and not for you though. I've cleaned many coins in my collection and since I never sell coins and just keep for my own self, makes no real difference. If I showed a cleaned coin to someone and they said it looks cleaned, I'd just say so what, it's mine.
Always reminds me of me changing the oil on my cars. I use whatever is cheap. And I mix all sorts of types and weights in doing so. I've heard so many people tell me this will run my cars and I say things like "gee, glad you told me since I've been doing that for about 30 years now with the same car".
As I said, as long as they are yours, do with them as you wish. Only worry about cleaning if you plan on selling.

Gramps76,

I did some cleaning of old copper coins from the 1797 on when my Grampa had brought from England and copper shined real good and I still have them and they are are dark now and don't look to cleaned and I did this in the early 50`s as a new coin fanatic

I also and have restored a lot of old cars when my body worked better. I still have my 1964 Buick Wildcat Convertible,as my handle, the last one I can do. My son has his name on it when that day comes. I got in in 1979 and it looked worse than some of my coins did

Gary