I'm Gonna Clean A Coin

Acetone is overrated. It can only handle organic material, not toning.

Okay, here's an update on how it went for anyone interested.

The guy from work brought his jewelry cleaner and he had some kind of 1968 silver olympic coin from Mexico, nice looking coin but it was kinda nasty. He showed how he dipped the coin for, maybe, 2 seconds and then fished it out and washed it off. He had some small foreign thing that was silver also (he said it was junk silver anyway so he didn't mind overdipping it) and he dropped it in and let it set for about 5 or 6 seconds and when he got it out it had that familiar cleaned look you see on some coins, no luster at all.

We got the eagles out and since the toning was just at the edges we just dipped that part in all the way around, probably not even for the full 2 seconds, and the toning was gone. They got a quick wash with distilled water and then patted dry and left out to air dry further just in case. I gotta say it was pretty sweet the way it took that toning off, there isn't any sign at all where the dip was on the coin, no loss of luster at all. I popped them back in the air tites later and you can't tell there was any difference between those and any of the others. I'm hoping there won't be any long term effects, can't really say yet, but the silver dollar guy says that he hasn't had any troubles so far so I'm hopefull.

I gotta throw in a disclaimer that I wouldn't want anyone to try this on anything they value without a bit of practice on some old junk silver. This is some touchy stuff, the difference between taking off the toning on those eagles and stripping the luster off that little foreign thingie and reducing it to something people laugh about when they see it on ebay was very slight, maybe 3 seconds or so. I wouldn't have even tried it without and old hand showing me how it was done and unfortunately not everyone has one of those lying around so even though it worked out well for me be careful if you try this.

Also, just as an experiment, we threw an old dateless buffalo in that stuff and it didn't come out well at all. It was one of those dark looking things you see once in a while and we tried his usual process of quick dipping and rinse and it didn't make much difference so we left it in longer, and then longer, he even rubbed it with his fingers and it came out a mess, it was still dirty in spots and then white in other areas so don't try it with nickels at all.

Thanks again for everyone with all the ideas.