Treasure Hunting

Jan 18

Cleaning Coins & Jewelry - Decisions, Decisions!

Lately I’ve dug up quite a few articles about ancient finds and consequently I’ve seen some pretty amazing pictures of coins and jewelry. It seems everyone has a great story to share about how they found something, who they first showed it to, and even how much the piece sold for. But no one addresses whether or not they cleaned the piece and if they did clean it, what they used to get it done.

So I started poking around some of my favorite websites and came up with a few pages that focus on the controversial topic of cleaning really old and really dirty coins. Take a look at these pages before you start cleaning or just file these away for when you’ll need to know!

A Tale of Two Cleanings - Provided by Numis: Coins and Coin Collecting, this website is easy-to-read and provides two excellent examples of ancient Athenian Owl coins that benefited from a good cleaning. Careful instruction and consideration for the effects these actions may have on the value of the coin are duly given by the author, but I promise once you see the before and after pictures you’ll be inspired to get to cleanin’!

Cleaning Ancient Coins - RomanTreasures.com gives more good advice and step-by-step instructions on cleaning the oldest of coins and getting the best results. I trust these folks and reading their tips is a great way to get started.

Metal Detecting - Should You Clean Coins? - Chris’s Mineral Collecting Page is a great, down-home style website that discusses everything you need to know about collecting minerals. Thankfully, he took it one step further and put up a basic “how-to” page about the kinds of coins the average metal detectorists digs up. His page is a little lengthy but has great information, including an example of an electrolysis cleaning that he built himself!