There will be a few types of educational posts here
- Equipment
- Tools
- Mistakes I have made, and how you can learn from them
Tools and Process
First, this is a case study of the process of cleaning an ancient coin
Process of cleaning ancient coin
1. Acquire some dirty coins Find a dealer that provides dirty coins. There are many categories of uncleaned ancient bronze coins 2. Image and Identify coin as best as you can before cleaning Taking good before photos is important in the process. It allows for you to later see before and after comparison. This comparison […]
Next, let’s learn about tools that are available and all their pros and cons.
What tools should you use?
Let’s cover the basics. Distilled Water Distilled water is great and safe for soaking ancient bronze coins. Most crusty ancient coins should soak in a glass jar for weeks if not months before you try to mechanically remove anything. Patience is key. The coin spent a millennia entombed in dirt. Give a few weeks in […]
Mistakes
I will tag a cleaning blog w/ “Mistakes” if I made mistakes during it. In such a blog I will go over the mistakes I made and what I would do differently moving forward.
Emperor Claudius Bronze Dupondius
NOTE: This is also a story of going too far in the pursuit of removing deposits. Trying too remove encrusted deposits, I inadvertently and ignorantly tooled the legends/portrait and smoothed the fields. Many experts and professionals would consider this going too far and damaging the numismatic value of the coin. This is not an uncommon […]
Of the Categories below, select Mistakes if you want to view mistakes and learn from them.