Restoring Pennies

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G'day everyone

Just thought I'd share the results of many hours experimenting with different methods of cleaning old copper coins. After coming to the conclusion that boiling them in motor oil worked best, I still wasn't happy.

I found my oldest coin to date on Saturday at a racecourse not far from Bundy, that was built in the late 1800's. The coin is an 1866 penny.
I was impressed with the results that others have had with "Andre's pencils" and started scraping away with a bamboo kebab stick. To cut a long story short, I ended up with a piece of kebab stick in my dremel (due to my impatience).

Here's the results.
1518392668_1866-optimized.jpg
1518392692_1866r-optimized.jpg


Here's a few more I did plus one that I left half untouched for comparison.
1518392915_roo-optimized.jpg
1518392934_pen-optimized.jpg
1518392949_test-optimized.jpg

And the dremel.
1518392991_drem-optimized.jpg


Thanks for looking.
Darren
 
Hi Daggy. Not the best photo but here's some I put in my tumbler with stainless steel shot.
Came up ok I reckon but definitely not something to do with anything that may be valuable.
1518608187_15186081371340.jpg

The row of 3 x pennies on the left are a sample of the type/condition coins I put in & the 4x on the right are after about 2hrs in the tumbler. The far right one had some pretty bad green copper cancer on it but it came off ok. Left a few dark marks but heaps better than before - maybe a bit longer for those ones?
 
G'day Mbasko

I've been thinking about buying a tumbler for a while now, mainly for rocks but I recon it would clean all my spendables pretty well.
Does the steel shot do any damage to the lettering on the coppers?

Daggy
 
Nothing noticeable. I wouldn't recommend leaving them in for any more than a couple of hours though. Some say to check them every 20mins or so?
Would be great on the modern coins to clean up.
I got my tumbler for rocks & only recently got the stainless shot to try on metals. Happy with the results so far. Might try a dirty nugget in there to & see how it cleans up?
Have had some potch in one tumbler lately & some of it is now showing colour where I didn't see any before. Did some agate & petrified wood from the Ridge that came up nice too.
 

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