Second day detecting back yard, 1894 indian head

Clean them

I clean my coins,when they left the mint they were shiny & new not covered
with crud.There are proper & safe ways to clean your coins just be careful
not to damage them.Bottom line...what good is digging out a coin if you cant
see what you've got.

An 1894 IH has a little more value than others but it is not really a key date especially since it was dug up. I found an 1875 Ih and used this method and it works real well. Fill a shot class with hydrogen peroxide. Nuke it for 30 seconds. Put the coin in and after 10 minutes take it out and run under water and use a soft toothbrush. It should look alot better. You can repeat this method a couple times too. Also after the hot bath you can use a toothpick to get more crud off...Hope this helps and congrats on the find...

Would you do this on a key date IH?

Spm673 (The Jersey Digger) said:

An 1894 IH has a little more value than others but it is not really a key date especially since it was dug up. I found an 1875 Ih and used this method and it works real well. Fill a shot class with hydrogen peroxide. Nuke it for 30 seconds. Put the coin in and after 10 minutes take it out and run under water and use a soft toothbrush. It should look alot better. You can repeat this method a couple times too. Also after the hot bath you can use a toothpick to get more crud off...Hope this helps and congrats on the find...

Click to expand...

If not, how do you clean the "good" coins?

cool find! congratz

Got daring and used olive oil and a toothbrush...

Hi all - thanks for all of the great ideas! I didn't want to try the hydrogen peroxide trick on this coin (I will try it on newer non-clads just to see what happens though!) because the patina is so sweet on this coin (I think it is brass this year?)

Anyhow I used an olive oil soak (just a few hours - I'm impatient) and then a hard-bristled toothbrush. It seems to have worked pretty well but there are still some small dirt clumps in the fine/tight details.

Attached are some pictures of my first 1800s coin (found my second yesterday - a 1848-O Half Dime - pics in another post!!! I guess it is all about location location location!) Forgive the quality - used my phone to snap these pics... I need to figure out Macro on my camera.