SLQ Date Restoration Attempts Begin Tonight

I've only been a member of this forum for a couple of years and in that time I must have seen at least a dozen threads from people wondering if it is possible to restore the dates on dateless Standing Liberty quarters, and I'm sure I've missed PLENTY of threads where it was discussed. It often comes up totally out of the context of the original posting.

Most folks could probably care less if a SLQ can be restored, but it holds a lot of fascination for some of us...and I'm one of THEM.

Many of you know that I restore dateless, worn out Buffalo nickels and sell them on ebay. That has caused some of you to make the quantum leap and assume that I might have the secret to restoring SLQs. Nothing can be further from reality! The coins are, obviously, of vastly different compositions and I'm just basically (though not ENTIRELY) using a very old science on the nickels. I can't take credit for anything more than doing a LOT of it and doing as well as I possibly can.

SLQs? Huh? You talkin' to me...? Who knows?

But starting tonight, I am going to do my best to figure it out. I am NOT a chemist, but I do have the advantage of working for a company that produces a commodity chemical and...guess what? We have lab tecnicians and goo-gobs of little beakers and flasks and all nature of containers of just about any chemical you can imagine back in the lab. They need all that stuff to analyze and test our products.

So I'll start off tonight with some of my own ideas and when those (probably) fail, I'll start bugging our lab rats for their opinions and ideas.

I have a few theories on how this will go. Here they are:

1.) I will probably fail miserably, no matter what I do
2.) If I have any success at all, it will only be on coins that are not too terribly worn
3.) Even if number 2 happens, the finished result will never come close to even the worst Buffalo nickel restoration and will probably be too weak to be captured with a camera.

I mention number 3 because the composition of the quarter is 90/10 silver to copper. If the chemical works only on the silver it will probably dissolve it completely away. (I've already had THAT happen to me!) If it only works on the copper it probably won't even show up. Nickels are 75/25 copper to nickel, a much better (I think) distribution to work with.

With regard to theory number 2, my first 3 subjects (shown below) have been deliberately picked because they are not aggregiously worn down. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's a ZERO showing on the first one, probably making it a 1920. The second quarter also seems to have some sort of remnant from the last digit but I cannot conclusively make it out. (Hold a gun to my head and I'd say it's either a 3 or a 4) The last quarter has absolutely nothing showing but, again, it's really not too badly worn.

So that's it. The adventure starts tonight. As I begin this epic journey I have 10 fingers and two functioning lungs and I'll try my best to make sure neither of those things change. For those of you who could care less...well...you probably stopped reading well before now. For you others - stay tuned.

Here are my first 3 subjects:


Above quarter is probably a 1920


Fragment of 4th digit is unrecognizable


Nothing, nada, zip