Numismatic and History Discussion Forums > Uncleaned Ancient Coin Discussion Forum
How to Clean Silvered (not Silver) Coins
SC:
The cleaned coin. I probably spent 2-3 hours on this coin.
I have posted two images of the reverse with the lighting angled different ways to try to better show what silvering remains.
Shawn
SC:
Now an early Heraclea campgate from the same hoard.
Poor quality images before the dirt was cleaned off with toothpicks.
Better images before I started exacto cleaning. This coin had more silvering showing and much less of the green encrustations. Nevertheless the encrustations were spread out and the thin dirt layer was all over so the entire coin needed mecahnical work.
Shawn
SC:
Images of the fully cleaned coin. This one took around 2 hours.
All this cleaning was done dry. I have never exposed these coins to water.
Under 20x magnification I did notice that the pin was leaving minute scratches - not really visible with the naked eye. As a result I have tried to minimize the pin use even more and do almost everything with the exacto. With a thin tip blade and the 20x magnification you can even clean between the letters with the blade. I now only use the pin in some hair and beard lines.
Shawn
agord:
I use a #15 scalpel under a stereo microscope. Requires practice, I started by trying on some culls that I had saved to use as give aways. Here are before and after pic of a recent effort.
Joe Sermarini:
Nice work!
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