Restoring Dateless Buffalos With Muriatic Acid

ok, I spent some time tonight takeing picture of just the good ones that have soaked the longest. the last pic in the album is a 15-d and looks grey. that is because it only spent a day or so in the solution and it had soaked in the nic-a-date solution. as weerdsteve had noted in a nother post about a blackish layer forming when soaking in nic-a-date.

anyway.. most of the coins turned out great. in my opinion. its almost a blast whitish color. the reverse sides did not get this way as they were face down and did not receive the same amount of attention the obverse side got.

some of the coins, not shown here, had nic-a-date applied to just the date area with a q-tip.. I also began soaking these as well as to give it a more uniform look. as I mentioned, I was very happy with some finds. especially the 1913-D and 13-s type2.

here is a link to my picasa google web album.. ENJOY and please leave me some feedback on what you think about these coins

http://picasaweb.google.com/Chad.De...t=directlink

I'm giving a worn-almost-smooth Shield nickel a soak in 28% acetic acid, which is used, diluted, as photographic stop bath. I figured I had nothing to lose. So far, no date popping up after an overnight soak.

Anyone tried using caned drinks such as coke?
It does a number on my stainless steel cooker tops.

Fatboy, I didn't dilute the 28% acetic acid; I used it full-strength and dipped the entire coin. Smelly stuff, by the way. This Shield nickel would probably grade AG-1, so as I stated earlier, I figured I had absolutely nothing to lose. At the worst, now, I have a very clean but well-worn Shield nickel.

After a soak of some 56 hours or so, the "United States of America" on the obverse popped out as did a few stars. The "5" looked hammered, and only the bottom of it was recognizable. On the reverse, the vertical stripes in the shield were visible, but only two or three letters in "In God We Trust" showed up. As for the date ... only the last numeral appeared, and very faintly. It most likely is a "9". A rare 1879? I'll never know, as a hard ding to the 2nd and 3rd numerals has completely wiped them out. And of course I already have an 1869, so it's not even a hole-filler for me.

It was an interesting experiment, even if I destroyed the top layer of a coin. At least I know that 28% acetic acid will work on nickel coins as well as anything else described here, and it's not nearly as dangerous as muriatic acid (which I've used before when etching a concrete floor before coloring it).

Edit to add: I don't know what I was looking at before, but the third digit is definitely an "8". Enough of the first digit, the "1", is visible to establish the exact location of the date, which is tiny on this coin. The area of the fourth digit appears almost to be scraped, although there may be a bit of raised area to indicate that what's there is a "2".