Advice - What is what?

[Alistair W]

Hi all,

I'm very new to this and wanted some advice before I go any further. I have a few practice coins and the patina determination is something I would like to hear some input on. So far this coin has soaked in DW for about a week with daily changes and I have removed the large chunks of dirt on the surface and then stopped.

I've tried to annotate some areas where I have some questions.
- The pale blue area with the orange oxide, should this be left as is, or is there value in going deeper? I presume that this is a compromised section of the coin and that it is not likely to improve beyond this?
- The red highlighted area with the darker bronze-tone versus the darker-blue highlighted, more-so copper tones - which is which? The darker tone looks more like the patina to me and the greener area has been where this has been lost?

Thanks for hearing a newcomer out and I hope to learn some more!

[Alistair W]

See attached image:

[Nathaniel N2]

What I see is an incredibly fragile patina. The light blue looks like the core of the coin, the red area is the highest patina, the blue is skinned patina (some patina remains but the surface is skinned off). I think this coin is more or less done. You might want to heat dry it (not something I've often done and someone else should explain that) and carefully wax it.

[Josiah Y]

I have a lot of coins like this. Depending on the condition of the reverse this coin is likely to far gone to identify. This coin is still valuable to new people like us, as a source of experience. Soak this coin and brush it with a stiff nylon brush and pay attention to what is left on the coin. A nylon brush will likely remove some of the patina... pay attention to the patina that was removed and make note of what it looked like before the brushing removed it. Then use a SBBB on it, pay attention to the effect various amounts of pressure has on it... it'll remove some more patina. Make note of the parts of the coin the SBBB removed and what they looked like beforehand. Probe what is left with a dental pick while paying attention to how much pressure you can apply to parts of the coin without damaging it... then apply more pressure and damage the coin. Do it under magnification and pay attention to how different areas looks when scraped with the dental pick. Make sure to pay attention to what that looks and feels like. Expose the core underneath the patina and see if that actually has more detail than the patina showed. Sometimes the core has alot of detail and you'll end up with a surprisingly detailed coin.  All this will give you a basis to estimate what a coin can and cannot take. Also very importantly, it'll teach you what messing up looks like so you can tell when you've started over cleaning.

[Nathaniel N2]

So... destroy it? It's your coin and it wouldn't be too much of a loss if you just experimented on it, there are a lot of LRBC out there. I would just wax and store it away.

[Josiah Y]

I guess it really depends on his goals. If he got this coin as a gift and is only going to clean a few coins... then no I wouldn't suggest doing what I said above. However, If Alistair really enjoys cleaning coins and he plans to continue this hobby for many years. Then yes, if you want to frame it that way then what I am suggesting is to destroy this coin. I ask what is worse though, using this coin to learn the many properties of dealing with ancients or over many months or possibly years making mistakes along the way that he wouldn't have if he had a better understanding of the medium? I'm suggesting learning from a few low quality unidentifiable coins that might as well be slugs instead of making mistakes on dozens or more coins as he slowly learns what not to do on coins that are likely to be in much better condition than the one above.

[SC]

Welcome to the forum Alistair.

Yes, your coin unfortunately has a very fragile patina.

I think the orange is probably the lowest level - almost bare metal, with a slight surface oxidization reaction.  The greens are the patina.

Unfortunately there is little that can be done to get a great result with these coins.

I usually try to pull them before any DW soak as that can make the surface worse - this fragile surface is about the only type that can be damaged by DW soaks.

Cleaning often involves no more than toothpick and soft toothbrush and even just rubbing between the fingers.

A great way to get cleaning tips is to spend several hours reading through this section.  Yes, you will get different opinions but that is valuable in itself.

SC