Cleaned nickels..(shield and 3 cent)

joe dert

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Jul 9, 2014
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I'm not calling these restored.. rather they have been cleaned.. stripped bare because they were all beach finds..some were eroded obviously more than others..but none had details..all crusty.. I cleaned them when I found them 6 years ago..

Of course the 3 cent nickel with a good example of the candlestick error was the most corroded..(12 O'Clock position)..and the nicest one had a hole..lol..just my luck..but the shield nickel was fairly decent considering it was encrusted..it retained enough detail to reveal a die crack.. I stripped them down..soaked them in 95% ethanol and then just threw them in a old baby food jar to be honest..just took them out today for pics..never even put them in flips..stupid move..they got contact marks from being stored together..that's as bad as rubbing off dirt..
 

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Wow those are gorgeous! Amazing cleaning work. Most nickels I dig around here are so far gone you're lucky you can even tell what kind of nickel it is sometimes!:lol:
 
Thank you.. I didn't expect to get any noteworthy results.. I was just trying to strip them down to see them for my own curiosity... I don't recall anything except experimenting with ketchup first.. I found a mix of apple cider vinegar and sea salt with fresh squeezed lemon juice to be fairly potent.. I specifically used sea salt because my theory was this..to break down a protein you use a protein.. to remove dried egg from your car you soak it with fresh eggs to loosen it..so I was trying to replicate the sea water with sea salt..not sure if it really made a difference...it took multiple soakings over several days..

I haven't tried it on dirt fished nickels though..only beach finds..

I see in my pics they are starting to turn a bit red.. corrosion of course.. I never sealed them...I'll clean them again..experiment a bit with possible slight coloring..then seal them and put them in the flips..when I die someone can decide for themselves if they have value beyond my sentiments for them..
 
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