Cleaning?

[Driffle66]

I know it’s recommended not to clean your coins as it lessens the value, however I have some coins that have been in the ground a LONG time along the shore of a salt water river while a foundation was being dug in the 1970’s. I can’t tell if there’s errors because of the grime and salt. Would it be ok in y’all’s opinion to use a hypersonic jewelry cleaner with only distilled water to loosen some of the grime? I look forward to your advice! Thank you in advance!

[mustbebob]

IMHO, I would think that environmental damage already exists on these buried coins. I don't believe anything more from an ultrasonic cleaner would make a big difference.

[Driffle66]

Will an ultrasonic cleaner cause damage to other coins? I have a couple of nice error quarters with sticky crap on them. Sorry for all the questions

[MintErrors]

I have an ultrasonic cleaner, and with just water, it should not be a big deal.

Coins that have been in the ground, in the eyes of a third party grading service would receive a details grade, and thus it would not receive the highest value anyway.

I personally have experimented with a few weird ideas to clean some coins, but these were not sellable, but one of them was a 1956-D Lincoln cent, CONECA RPM 001. It had a huge patch of the greenish slimey verdigris on it, and I wanted to see if I could make it clean enough to photograph. The post about this coin is here:

https://minterrors.org/cleaning-a-co...d-you-do-this/

People tend to shy away from environmentally damaged coins, so it is always up to the current owner of the coin to determine if they should or not.

[Driffle66]

Thank you so much for the wealth of information! It’s given me a lot to think about.