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Posted 07/17/2022 11:32 pm
I'm going to continue the numbering system from my previous post; the three at the top of this page are numbers 6, 7 and 8.
#6 has something odd going down; the way it' s been scoured away across the shield make me think some kind of blob of glue or some such got stuck there, then broke away again. Perhaps even a soldering job that didn't stick, or even a blob of green paint. So I'm not entirely sure the green stuff is "natural". As with number 3, it's cupronickel, so should clean up reasonably well.
#7: I don't think it's true verdigris. I have seen, and treated, this kind of greenish-brown corrosion before, with mixed success. It's probably stable, so leaving it alone might be best. I don't think "corrosion cameo" is a true collector term, but that's what I'm kind of seeing here.
#8: pale green and powdery, this looks more like classic verdigris. Treat immediate.
A note on verdigris: this pale green powdery form is active and "contagious", also known as "bronze disease", so called because the way it spreads, people in olden times thought it actually was something biological in origin, some kind of metal-eating lichen or something. Not only will it continue to spread across the surface of a coin, but if bits of the powder fall off and land on other coins, those other coins can start to corrode too. Coins with untreated verdigris should not be stored together with un-corroded coins. I have seen buckets of loose coins where a single coin with verdigris on it has caused dozens of otherwise nice coins in the bucket to become ruined.
#6 has something odd going down; the way it' s been scoured away across the shield make me think some kind of blob of glue or some such got stuck there, then broke away again. Perhaps even a soldering job that didn't stick, or even a blob of green paint. So I'm not entirely sure the green stuff is "natural". As with number 3, it's cupronickel, so should clean up reasonably well.
#7: I don't think it's true verdigris. I have seen, and treated, this kind of greenish-brown corrosion before, with mixed success. It's probably stable, so leaving it alone might be best. I don't think "corrosion cameo" is a true collector term, but that's what I'm kind of seeing here.
#8: pale green and powdery, this looks more like classic verdigris. Treat immediate.
A note on verdigris: this pale green powdery form is active and "contagious", also known as "bronze disease", so called because the way it spreads, people in olden times thought it actually was something biological in origin, some kind of metal-eating lichen or something. Not only will it continue to spread across the surface of a coin, but if bits of the powder fall off and land on other coins, those other coins can start to corrode too. Coins with untreated verdigris should not be stored together with un-corroded coins. I have seen buckets of loose coins where a single coin with verdigris on it has caused dozens of otherwise nice coins in the bucket to become ruined.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
