Cleaning the Ancient Coins!

Disclaimer: I have to say this for all the "nice people" out there that might get hurt. I am only putting up these web pages and instructions for reference of how I clean my Ancient Coins. If you want to do this, PLEASE read ALL instructions before proceeding, I'd suggest that if you've never done anything like this before, print these instructions before you begin. I will not be held responsible for any wrong doings or mistakes on your part that cause injury or anything more serious to you or anything you own. Which, in the simplest of terms, absolves me from anything you do after this point! Even more simple "PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!". Isn't it a shame that in this day and age I have to put this here!!!

If you are coming into this with the notion that you are going to just sit down and clean your coins, this isn't for you, it takes time! Some coins can clean up in an hour, some a couple days, some a couple weeks and a lot over months. You have to have patience for this! If you try to clean the coins too fast, there is a good possibility that you will ruin the coin, and drive its value down. There are 2 rules to abide by here:

As many of you already know, I have developed a keen interest in old coins, particularly the Ancient coins. Most people only think of "Roman Coins" when you mention ancients, but they also include Greek, Islamic, Celtic, Byzantine, etc. just to name a few. Even with the Roman coins there are other categories and of course time periods, tribes, commemoratives, and so on. There are some links on the bottom of the page that will tell you everything and anything you want to know about ancient coins!

There are many resources to find the "un-cleaned" ancient coins. Some coin dealers sell them in their stores, there are a lot of resources on the Internet, but most of them are bought on eBay. I will probably become a dealer here next month so there is one more source!!! You have to be really careful if you are buying things from eBay. What sounds like a good deal, will probably just put you out of money, remember that is it sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true. For example: A person was selling coins for $.35 each and $4.00 shipping and handling. Good deal right!!! When I got the 10 coins, the biggest coin was 9mm, like the size of an eraser on a pencil, no detail at all on any of them, I was out $7.50. Most of the better coins are between $1.25 - $4.00 a piece. That brings up another thing about eBay. When the coins go "on sale" for $.50 a piece or something like that, look at the shipping and handling price, normally $5.00 - $10.00, they are not going to lose anything by selling you the coins cheap! I have gotten to know many of the dealers around the area and on the net, so if you have a question on buying them or about a seller, please don't hesitate to email me!!!

When buying these coins, no matter where you are buying from, PLEASE do not fall for the HYPE!!! This is really important to you especially if you are a beginner and don't really know the coins. Don't fall into the trap of "Silver found", "Gold found", "Rare", "only 5 in the world", and so on. Sure they probably found one or two gold or silver coins out of the 10,000 they have, so they aren't lying, just not being totally honest. Almost like me saying that I find a silver nickel every time I go to the bank. What I don't tell you is that I buy $500 worth of nickels so the odds are pretty good in my favor. There are hundreds of millions of ancient coins that fall into all categories and their value is normally determined by Ruler, Denomination and condition.

Now that you have the coins, it is time to inspect them and prep them to be cleaned. First off, let me tell you what to look for in the coins, this will make it a little easier. Some of the coins you have may not be coins at all! About one in every 100 is a rock or an obvious slug. I use my pin-pointer on suspect coins to see if they are metal or not, it works really well and saves you from cleaning a rock, not that I have done that, lol…

Culls: A cull coin is an inferior or damaged coin. Cull coins are coins that most collectors wouldn't be interested in due to exceedingly poor condition. These conditions can be holes, bending, large scratches, no detail or just slight detail on the obverse and /or reverse, serious pitting, etc. As you can see in the pictures below (when I add them), some are not worth anything, all you can say is they are an ancient coin that can't be attributed. One of the good things about cull coins is that they make for good practice before you clean the good coins!

Attribution: What is attribution? In the simplest terms, it is collecting all the information about the coin, every little detail that you can. Attributions of the coins consists of the following, but are not limited to them, these are just the basics:

You can also add Grade, Denomination, etc. to the list. The more you know about the coin, the more you can get an idea of what it is worth, and it is a great history lesson too!

Patina: Patination, or "patina", is a thin layer of oxidization that forms on the surface of the coin over years and years. The patina of the coin it is most often green, brown, black, red, and blue in color. You will probably see brown, green, and black the most in the coins. Most of the time, red and blue patina are usually a bad form of oxidation, and basically can ruin a coin. PATINA IS GOOD!!!! You don't want to clean your coins down to bare metal, sometimes you can't help it, but you want to keep the patina as intact as possible!

Anything and everything about ancient coins can be found here: http://www.forumancientcoins.com/ They are the Mecca of all ancient coins with links to all sorts of places for almost anything you want to know about your coins. The people on their forum are great also, I go there all the time if I have questions, normally the answers are in less than an hour. Of course there is the main man himself, David R. Sear at http://www.davidrsear.com/index.html the top grading guru!

Now that we have all the formalities out of the way, let's go to the next page and start gathering things needed for cleaning the coins!!!

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