1960DPenny
Junior Member
I finally got the Harbor Freight Rock tumbler people have been talking about.
I, of course, wasted no time in plugging it in and throwing in some of my beat up clad coins.
So far . . . I am rather impressed. For $38.00 (think it was on sale), the tumbler does an excellent job at bringing old coins back to life.
For example, I started with four pennies in rather mediocre condition.
The first picture below is a "Before Picture". As you can see, none of the coins are in horrible shape -- but none really sparkle or shine either. (I added a rather pristine coin in the middle to show how a "good" coin looks).
Well, I ran the four pennies in the tumbler for about 75 minutes (kind of surprised how little time was required) and the four pennies came out in a radically different form. (See Picture 2# below).
As you can see, the pennies "cleaned up" quite nicely and where before you had a hard time seeing any detail, including dates, now the pennies are much more clearer and easy to read.
The downside -- of course -- is that the coins are much more "grainy" in appearance with hundreds of little dings and scratches in the coins. This is -- naturally -- the byproduct of the tumbling process. On any coins of value, I imagine this process (even if it ultimately made the coin look better) would greatly strip the coin of much of its value.
Still, for truly junk coins (i.e., clad), this process is really impressive.
More tests and pics in the future as I play around with my new toy.
I, of course, wasted no time in plugging it in and throwing in some of my beat up clad coins.
So far . . . I am rather impressed. For $38.00 (think it was on sale), the tumbler does an excellent job at bringing old coins back to life.
For example, I started with four pennies in rather mediocre condition.
The first picture below is a "Before Picture". As you can see, none of the coins are in horrible shape -- but none really sparkle or shine either. (I added a rather pristine coin in the middle to show how a "good" coin looks).
Well, I ran the four pennies in the tumbler for about 75 minutes (kind of surprised how little time was required) and the four pennies came out in a radically different form. (See Picture 2# below).
As you can see, the pennies "cleaned up" quite nicely and where before you had a hard time seeing any detail, including dates, now the pennies are much more clearer and easy to read.
The downside -- of course -- is that the coins are much more "grainy" in appearance with hundreds of little dings and scratches in the coins. This is -- naturally -- the byproduct of the tumbling process. On any coins of value, I imagine this process (even if it ultimately made the coin look better) would greatly strip the coin of much of its value.
Still, for truly junk coins (i.e., clad), this process is really impressive.
More tests and pics in the future as I play around with my new toy.