LRBC Coin-cleaning Project

[Mayadigger]

Ave!

In the photo below, we're presenting a 'never touched before' uncleaned Roman follis; the test scrape on the Rx is by me. Ae 28mm/10.6gm.

Pretty rare to get one of these large Follis in an uncleaned coin lot, so I thought I'd share, cleaning-wise.

As seen on the reverse, Genius stg. l., holding patera and cornucopia. But who is the emperor/caesar and which mint? We'll be adding more images throughout the restoration process.

This is a coin-cleaning 'throw down' for a few of us, you know who you are.   Cross my heart and hope to die, we'll not only bring this coin to beautiful green patina glory, but we'll only use a common scalpel, Spit n Polish, Volpex Soap, and a dab of Ren Wax. No power tools, JAX, zapping, etc.

Also, see below pix of an awesome Trajan Dup, RIC 626 that was cleaned in the same manner. Much better in hand than seen in my crappy photo.

Your thoughts,
Best regards,
Kevin

[Mayadigger]

Ave!

Whoops! It's silvered and I have already screwed the pooch. 

At this point, I'm ditching the scalpel for now and will resort to soaks, MSR perhaps, and brushing. Anything more harsh will remove the delicate silvering.

Well, at least we know that the emperor is Diocletian and the mint is AQ.

Any thoughts, folks?

Best regards,
Kevin

[SC]

Good luck.  On this I would try just soaks and scalpel at first.  Maybe brushing after soak with very soft toothbrush.  If the dirt will "melt" off you will be in great shape.  Maybe instead once soaked and dried the dirt flakes of better.  The real demon is when the dirt just stays harder than the silvering no matter what you do.  I find those cases hopeless.

Shawn
 

[Tony A]

Shawn -

The silvering is ALWAYS the devil, isn't it?

I think I'd try a few short (a few minutes at the most) soaks in MSR before a longer soak in DW. I've had pretty good luck with MSR in many of these cases - and it does tend to leave the silvering alone while loosening up the dirt. The problem is you have to keep a VERY close eye on it (no walking away or anything) and get the coin out before it breaks up all the dirt and takes the silvering with it. It's a rather tedious process of short soak, remove, soft brush, soak, remove, short brush ... but it does save the silvering. (Or at least leaves more of the silvering than long DW soaks and brushing seems to.)

Tony

(Haven't been able to get on for a while, but it's good to be back!)