what is the best way to clean my coins and store them. thanks for any input.

Okay, first ... DON'T clean them !!! A "bath" in acetone will remove most organics (finger oils, circulation dirt, boogers, etc.) but never rub the coin with anything. You could ruin the value of the coin.

Storage options are all over the place and include cardboard 2x2's (the kind you staple are usually preferred), Kraft envelopes (not used by a lot of people anymore as they can have some acids in the paper), Airtites (an inert plastic product which can get expensive), and see-thru flips. The flips come in a variety of types ... best ones are SaFlips (or equal) which are made of a rather stiff Mylar and contain no PVC. Avoid any and all storage products that contain PVC because it will ruin the coins stored therein.

I'm sure others will be here to answer you with thier preferences

Yep, acetone will dissolve the boogers, for sure. ;-) Leave coins as you find them unless they have something on them which will corrode the surfaces. I use 2x2 carboards and 20 pocket vinyl pages in ring binders for displaying my coins. I use 2x2s and the long boxes available from Transline and other supply houses for long term storage.

2x2s have proven to be the best storage/display accessory I've found.

I believe PVC in itself is just fine. However, it is the chemical agents often used to soften PVC that damage coins.

You know, you have to know what you are going to clean. You might be able to get away with silver and gold with little cleaning, but obviously coin specialists can tell them right away, or rather some novices can tell that too.

But if you happen to have any copper coins, never ever clean them, unless you have those "green" copper oxide. If you clean them, you are more likely to find pitholes which you may never thought of, but of course, there is a reason to it. When oxidiation happens, corrosion happens and it eats away part of the metal. And so, when you try to remove such the corrosion, you are removing part of the "dirt" that covered some of the pitholes that it caused...

There is a reason why coin collectors rarely like coins being cleaned... because most of the time, they are quite evident and usually undesirable for too many reasons.

Depending on the type of metal coins that you got there, if you have silver or copper, it is better if you get some kind of silica pack to remove any moisture unless your area happens to be dry, which is a good story. Moisture is just bad for the coins.

And yea... I think everyone else filled in the other parts that I wanted to say.

I do not consider a gold coin dipped in acetone as cleaned

I dipped twice to remove fingerprints on two coins that were shipped with fingerprints on them because if the coin is not 999 gold the fingerprint may etch in the copper

However I have read that artificially toned silver will lose the completely toning and that should be a surprise if you did not know it was artificially toned

The product in PVC that causes damage is the plasticizer ( an Adipate I think )
Acetone will remove plasticizer very quickly

I agree completely with Ageka on acetone dipping of gold coins. People who claim to be able to tell when a gold coin has been dipped in acetone are full of something that would be unpleasant to step in. ;-)

Er no, it's not necessary true. It depends on the gold alloy. If you have coins that's at least .900, dipping gold coins in acetone is pretty hard to tell. It isn't very true if you have a 14k gold coin, but that is still called "gold".

Sorry we have an intercontinental language barrier
It is in some countries like in France illegal to call anything gold that is not at least
18 karat
And I never bought a coin that is less then 900/1000 since those are considered
non investor material and induce taxation of like 8 %
Some overzealous custom people even made me pay tax on a double eagle bought in Switzerland because they considered you had to have 901/1000
to be exempt or some such

Wow, you don't get taxed on gold bullions that's around 22k gold? Quite a few countries that I have been through does tax on anything that has >20k gold. But again, that depends from countries to countries.

Australia recently decided to tax gold bullion coins just last year...

Yes, acetone is perfectly safe for almost pure gold coins, as they are quite unreactive. You just don't try to use it on silver or copper or any other metals (except palladium, platinum and titanium - but you are more likely to find such coins really hard to come by... ) as you would not know the results.

ageka: Don't worry about the language barrier, I can perfectly understand you I don't like my gold coins any less than 0.900 either

Gxseries

Not only do I not get taxed
I can buy a lot of coins at meltprice at money exchangers
like maples, krugers, nuggets, goldeagles
sovereigns, 20 BF , 20 FF , vrenellis and 10 Florins

OMG WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!! I must now move to your place... O_O

I am Belgian and also post on a German forum
And I allready got reported back from half a dozen Germans
daytripping and buying gold here and liking the low prices

Must move to Belgium....

Belgium chocolate... mmmmmmmmmmmmm
Sorry, off topic.

Belgium gold coins...

Well two out of three ain't bad

You forgot Belgian beer

And I mean cooled and strong

Now I have a cleaning question and do not forget I have no access to eZest nor MS70 dip
And don't ask how come

I have a gold coin purity 9999 in proof top quality
This coin got micropaintspots from an airbrush on it
Might be acrylic paint
I tried Acetone, Methylethylketone,Toluene, Ethylacetate; CMK100, white spirit
cellulose thinner, and hot water and liquid soap
I have thricloroethylene and cola on my next try it list
Does any of you have any experience with phosphoric acid ?
I know that Nitric acid is not nice to copper but at 9999 purity would that matter ?
I love to experiment

en de patatten met mayonaise

That is about the only thing you cannot export
french fries with mayo you have to eat on the spot
and I have to confess I like the sugared mayo from holland better
then ours
I never understood why people call them french fries

French Fries refers to the "cut" of the potato; when I used to work in the Restaurant Biz, we would sometimes refer to thin fries as "french cut", wedges as "steak fries", Ore Ida fries as "crinkle Cut" and really thin fries as "shoestrings". When we were busy, everything was a @#$ing french fry. In fact, everything was referring to as @#$ing, especially when talking to each other.

there is, as I recall, a term in food prep called "frenching". to french food is to trim the fat by cutting the item into thin strips. this is where i suspect the term "french fry" comes from, it refers to potatoes that have been 'frenched'.

In france, I believe they are referred to as something like "pomme frites" and they actually originated in belgium. In espanol, they are Papas Fritas.

This could all be apocryphal, so i await a knowing correction from a linguist or food historian.

Fjord I never heard that explanation before but it makes sense

However in my limited spanish I think you just fried the pope
or somebody's father

I think it should be Patatas Fritas

In Belgium every village as at least one trailer selling French Fries I talked to these guys and they use like 11 mm cutting machines and of course the fat is their secret because it gives the final taste

I also do not understand why in England they call them Chips (like in fish and chips) and I was kind of amazed the first time I saw them put vinigar on the fries

Acetone has never caused a reaction on any metal I've dipped in it. It's an organic solvent, not an acid or alkali. .900 fine or .917 is what all the old gold coins I have are. I've never seen any struck in .580 which is what 14k works out to be. That would be kid of a debased alloy for coin gold.

Maybe you should try the jeweler's standby of a strong solution of sudsy ammonia on the paint spatters. That seems to clean a lot of things from jewelry, even adhesions that have resisted other cleaners.

This is one that I know right now.

http://www.pandaamerica.com/details.asp?it...&grp=1&categ=41

But obviously that is a big mistake and that was minted just one year in the whole Russian history.

Just one small point, very small but important. 2x2s whilst very useful for storage it is particularly essential to ensure that the humidy around them is correct, because if it is too humid the mylar windows can cause the coins to begin sweating. If they sweat they then 'turn'. Watch out for verdigris in particular.

All coins in 2x2s heading in this direction are quickly removed from them due to previous bad experience. Airtites seem fine though.

That is indeed correct. Papas is a way to refer to potatos. Papas Fritas = Fried Potatos

Senior Year Spanish Baby!

-Bobby

I only know spanish from my yearly vacations in Spain and like 500 hours of selfstudy
So it probably is like a Hot Dog I have two cocker spaniels but I would not eat them and if I did not know it was a Frankfurter I would wander

So Papas Fritas works for me
I only wander they know what it is in Spain
Like in spain they use the word Coger= take very much I am told in south america it is totally different in meaning (lol)

28 plain
I heard about ammonia for silver I think
What is sudsy ammonia ? is it concentrated ammoniumhydroxite NH4OH ?

I read in a German forum that a several 9999 german gold coins had red spots
A university investigated them with X rays and established the spots were
84 % silver 10 % copper and 5 % gold and were probably silversulfide
It was assumed the spots were only a few molecular layers thick and were impurities of the planchet makers who made silver blanks and gold blanks

So assuming my coin is spotted not with acrylic paint but with silversulfide I seam to find that one of the possible treatment is citric acid µ
I know nothing about silver any suggestions ?

Yuck, that is very horrible. Must be some horrible silver/copper plating devices used to strike the gold coins. Bad quality checking.

Citrus acid wouldn't necessary help, as it may dissolve some of the copper away, but it will not do anything with the silver. I was about to suggest nitric acid, but I REALLY don't know the results, as it does seperate the silver off from gold too but I don't know how the final result would be like...

Geez, what kind of coin do you have there ageka?

I got microspots that only show up under 10X maginification but that german forum has a pic of a 1 gram minibar with a huge red spot
I was told the citric acid woud remove the silversulfide
Nitric is too dangerous for copper content of 10% in the spots

first pic on the page
http://www.goldseiten-forum.de/thread.php?threadid=1849&sid=