Cleaning Burnt Coins

Sorry to hear about your loss. Hope the folks are holding up OK.

Fire-burnt collectable coins are always tragic... I don't think there's much that can be done. Burning usually results in a very thick layer of oxides forming on the surface, as well as subsidiary chemical reactions with anything the coins were sitting in/on or that fell on them during the fire.

You could try the standard archaeological treatments - a fire basically does a few thousand years worth of damage in minutes. An ammonia soak for silver, a longer soak in olive oil or distilled water for coppers. Not sure what to do about cupronickel or al-bronze. But any sort of treatment like that done to a modern coin will make it look "cleaned", so either way its collectable value is greatly diminished.

Thanks for the help and the thoughts! Will see what I can do.

Probably way to late for Ben but lots of information here...http://metaldetectingworld.com/clea...n_coin.shtml.
I would not recommrnd most of the techniques for collectable coins but, if you have nothing to lose with badly damaged coins, could be of use.

I would be interested in comments.
Me? I am rushing off to see if I can find some Aqua Regia (prepared by mixing three parts of concentrated Hydrochloric acid (HCl) with one part concentrated Nitric acid (HNO3) followed by dilution to about 1:10 -NOTE: Aqua Regia is the only acid that will dissolve gold and platinum). Nitric acid is very corrosive -will even dissolve glass!
Just the thing to soak my gold coins in; NOT.

cheers
Jeff

be careful !

"Johnny took a drink one day,
but Johnny shall drink no more:
for what he thought was H2O,
was H2SO4 ..."

Peter