Verdigris

Give it to me?

Otherwise, I can't help you.

Hi Bigfella. From previous posts, where this has been discussed, it seems that soaking in extra virgin olive oil is succesful. Although it may take awhile. Also pushing the coin into a raw potato works. You can use a combination of the two.

Good luck

Steve

Patience is your greatest asset, here. A moment of haste can easily wipe a few hundred off the value of the coin, it sounds like.

Olive oil is generally considered the most conservative treatment, and I'd start with that. Soak it for a week to a month and then try to remove it. But first, try the technique out on common coins with similar damage.

If you're going to wait until you're comfortable with the technique before starting on your prize, I'd recommend sealing it up in an airtight box with some silica gel or other dessicant - that should slow down the spread.

Bigfella, before you do the olive oil experiment, I highly recommand you to do it with a common year penny, which would give you a good idea of what kind of reaction it might give out. But before you process with it, I would try to remove most of them with a toothpick gently as toothpick shouldn't scratch the coin, except the verdigris floating around will cause some problems, which can scratch the coin.

For a 2000 dollar coin, I would be extremely cautious with it.

From personal experience, pure ammonia is great to remove "the green monster" on copper ... HOWEVER ... if left in ammonia too long - any patina will be completely stripped-off. I found it out by accidentally leaving a 1813 SUD Mexican 8Reales copper in the ammonia - now I own a bright-orange 200-year-old coin (no verdigris, though :) )

~Roman

I would soak it in the olive oil. If it isn't too big of a spot it should take around a month to a month and a half. I soaked some copper and nickel coins in an olive oil bath for a month and most came out fairly good. I had to stick three of them back in and they have been in for another week. A toothpick and or q-tip works the best for getting the green off. I could have done with one of those big magnifiers with the light however. It is kind of tough cleaning one up without one of those, my eyes can't take all the squinting anymore. Good luck.

P.S. Use some acetone to dip in when you are done with the soak to get the oil off of the surface and then rinse in distilled water after that and gently pat dry with a soft cotton ball. Mine weren't worth $2k though so I didn't rinse off after the acetone or distilled water however.