Cleaning Coins

Everyone would love to have a collection of perfect, shiny coins in their binder. Because we're working with circulated coins, however, we're going to end up with scratched, dirty, or otherwise imperfect specimens. You may find coins that have actual dirt/grime on them, have been written on, or have tarnish or blemishes from being handled by the dozens of people whose pockets the coin went through before coming into your possession.

Don't Clean Valuable Coins

Though your first reaction might be to clean and scrub every coin in your collection until it looks brand new, you should generally avoid cleaning coins unless:

• You know for certain that the coins are not valuable, or
• You don't care if the coins are valuable

Like all collectibles, cleaning anything that may potentially be valuable is best left to professionals. Cleaning to preserve value and avoid further damage takes great care and an understanding of the type of metal in the coin and the type of stain/blemish/coating that is affecting it. If you have coins that you would like to get professionally cleaned, talk to a local coin shop and see if they offer cleaning services or can recommend a local, respectable cleaning service (they may have one they use for the coins in their shop).

Cleaning Up Your Non-Valuable Coins

You could write a book on all the different ways to clean different types of coin problems. I'm going to cover a couple of different cleaning methods I've used, but they are by no means the only ways to deal with dirty coins. Do not use any of these cleaning methods on valuable coins, or coins made of silver or gold!

For a mild cleansing to remove loose dirt and surface oil, you can start with simple soap and water. Fill a bowl with water, add a squirt of liquid hand soap and mix it together. Take one or two handfuls of coins and swish them around in the bowl for about a minute. Take them out, rinse them with plain water, and immediately dry them with a towel - if any water drops are left to dry on the coins themselves, they could create new stains. Repeat with the rest of your coins.

If there is stuck-on dirt or grime, you can try to scrape it off with a pencil eraser or toothpick. You don't want to use anything that's harder than the metal you're cleaning, or you could cause new scratches. Toothpicks are especially handy for clearing dirt out of corners, letters, or other small designs in a coin.

Before (left) and after (right)

To give a coin more of a scrub/polish, you can try rubbing the coin with toothpaste. You can either use a soft-bristled brush (not the brush you use yourself) or apply toothpaste to a washcloth, and gently rub/scrub the coin on both sides. Most toothpastes include a mild abrasive, which on the coin will scrub away the outer-most layer of metal and reduce the appearance of stains or tarnish. Rinse the coin well with water when you're done, and then immediately dry it.

Before (left) and after (right)

Some tarnish, oil, and dirt can be removed by soaking the coin in an acidic liquid like vinegar. Put some vinegar in a glass container and drop the coin in. Let it lay for 5 minutes on one side, then flip it over so that the other side gets exposure to the liquid and soak for 5 more minutes. Remove it, rinse well with water, and then dry.

There are many different cleaning solutions that you can buy online or from a coin shop that are designed for cleaning coins. Ask your coin shop for a product that they recommend, or do some searches online to see what other coin collectors like or don't like.

After Cleaning

Once you've cleaned your coins, you need to handle them as little as possible to keep them clean. Hold cleaned coins only by the edges so that your fingers don't touch the front or back. You can use soft cotton gloves to handle coins once they've been cleaned (and it's not a bad idea to use them anytime you handle coins) to avoid transferring finger oil onto the coins. Seal your coins in paper or plastic flips so that they won't be exposed to more fingerprints or dust, and then store them in your chosen container (see my earlier post about starting a coin collection for more information about flips, albums, and boxes).

To Clean or Not To Clean?

Unless you are preparing coins for a gift or display, I feel that you're usually better off not cleaning your coins. The benefit you get from cleaning is very small, and you run the risk of reducing whatever value the coin might have. There is no doubt that a good cleaning can make a coin look significantly better, but authenticity often trumps appearance for collectibles - leaving your coins unaltered is usually the safest choice.

What to Do with Duplicate Coins

When you first start acquiring coins, you should find that most can go straight into your collection. As your collection grows, though, you're going to get coins that you already have. Maybe someone brought you back a handful of coins from their trip, and there are several of the same coin. Or you bought a bag of mixed coins at a coin shop and ended up with some that are already in your collection. Since you probably don't want to keep all these extra coins in your collection, what should you do with these duplicates?

Is it a Duplicate?

Would you consider these duplicates?

First you should make sure that it truly is a duplicate, and that's going to depend on what you're collecting. If you are collecting one coin from every country, then another coin from the same country, no matter how it's different, would be a duplicate. If you're collecting the many different denominations and styles from each country, then a duplicate coin would be from the same country, have the same denomination (amount, like "25 cents"), and would probably have the same or a similar year.

Some coins, such as those from Switzerland or the United States, change very infrequently. A coin from 30 years ago might be exactly the same as a coin today. Other coins may change as frequently as every year (or even many times a year, like the State Quarters from the United States) due to government or ruler changes, monetary changes, or to celebrate or commemorate a person or event. So the coins from 1995 and 1996 may be significantly different - and you may want them both in your collection.

If you're keeping track of your collection in a list or spreadsheet, then checking a new coin's country, denomination, and year against your list is a good first step. If you have the same coin from the same year, then it is almost certainly a duplicate (the exception being sets like the State Quarters, where there are several different styles in a single year).  But if the new coin is a few years away from the coin in your collection, you may want to compare it to the actual coin in your collection to see if they are truly the same. This is where a Web site like Numista can be helpful, because you can quickly look up the coin in your collection and compare it to the new coin.

Which Coin to Keep?

If you've determined that the new coin really is a duplicate of one in your collection, you next need to decide which one to keep. Compare the new coin to the one in your collection and see which one is in better condition (shinier, cleaner, fewer scratches, more detail visible). If they appear to be in similar condition, you may want to keep the older coin. If you like the new coin better than the one in your collection, don't be afraid to replace it.

Dealing with Duplicates

Once you've decided which coin to keep, you're still left with one that you don't need. Here are some ideas for what you can do with your duplicates.

Save them for trading. If you don't have anyone to trade with now, you will probably find someone sooner or later. So keep your duplicates in a bag or box so that when the time comes, you have some coins to trade. Without your duplicates, you'd have to trade coins in your collection - and they're in your collection because you want to keep them, not trade them for other coins.

Give them away. You can use your duplicate coins to get someone else - a friend, a relative, a co-worker - interested in collecting world coins.  Give them a set of 5 to 10 different coins from your duplicates and see if they start their own collection. Then you'll have someone you can trade your duplicates with (once they start getting their own coins).

Trade online. Web sites like Numista and World Coin Gallery help collectors trade their duplicate coins with other collectors by letting members see what they have to trade. You'll have to pay postage to mail your coins to someone else, but if you don't have any collectors nearby that you can trade with this can be a good way to both get rid of your duplicates and acquire some new coins in the process.

What to Collect

Sometimes starting a new collection can be intimidating simply because of the number of different items that are available. Most collectibles can be collected by some kind of theme within the collectible space - baseball cards can be collected by team or year, rocks can be collected by color or type, toy cars can be collected by manufacturer or type of vehicle - and world coins are no exception. Because of the large variety of coins that exist, it's easy to pick one (or more) themes to collect instead of trying to collect anything and everything. A themed collection can also be more interesting to display, because the coins are connected to each other. Children especially may enjoy building a themed collection because it's easier to know what to look for.

Picture Themes

A collection based around the pictures on the coins requires no reading and allows the collector to make decisions about whether to include or exclude a certain coin.  Some good picture themes are animals, plants, people, buildings, or transportation (boats, cars, airplanes, etc.). You can narrow down the theme even further (only birds, only flowers, only boats) but I think you'll find this will seriously limit the size of your collection. Still, for a child's collection, or a collection for a very specific purpose (to frame and hang in a boat, for example), a very small, very specific theme can be a great way to start.

Date Themes

For a collection with personal significance, you could collect only coins from a certain year (your birth, child's birth, wedding, etc.). The coins in a collection like this would be quite varied, and the number of coins available to collect would be larger than with a picture theme.

Coin Property Themes

Beyond collecting based what's on the coins themselves, you can form a collection based on the physical properties of the coins.

For a visually striking collection, you can collect coins that aren't round. I believe that non-round coins are less common now than they have been over the past 50 years, but you can find square coins, octagonal (and other multi-sided) coins, and scalloped coins (with a wavy edge).

Several countries over the last 50 years have produced coins with holes, including Spain and Denmark. Japan's 5-yen coin has had with a hole in the center for many years (it's the only coin I can think of that is still in circulation). Between 1900 and 1950, more countries had coins with holes (including Belgium and France).

You can also create a collection around the color of the coins. A large percentage of all coins are silver in color (though very few are made of actual silver), so it can be fun to collect only the other colors - copper or bronze (brownish) or gold-colored (you're very unlikely to find any coins made of actual gold). Older coins that look black are probably made of zinc, which looks silvery when it's fresh but can tarnish to black.

Location Themes

Because coins come from specific areas of the world, you can build a collection based on where the coins are from. They could be based on specific countries (coins from countries you've visited; coins from where your family comes from) or specific continents (Europe, Asia, Africa, South America) if you have a particular affinity for some part of the world.

For children, it can be fun to try to collect one coin from every country. You can have a map of the world that can either be colored in or marked with pins as each country is collected, which can also help get children introduced to world geography.

Beyond Themes

Even if you start with a theme, you eventually may expand your collection and start trying to collect every different world coin. The question then becomes - what constitutes a "different" coin? As a collector, you will have to make decisions about what kinds of changes you care about collecting and which you will pass up. While major changes (coin size, color, or picture) more obviously deserve to be in your collection, there are some less-obvious changes that you may or may not want to include.

Mint marks - Some countries (including the US) put a different letter or symbol on coins to indicate where they were made. Except for the mint mark, the coins are usually identical.

Language differences - Pre-Euro Belgium coins came in 2 varieties each year - one with Belgium written in Flemish (Belgie) and one with Belgium written in French (Belgique). The rest of the coins are identical.

Font changes - From one year to another, the font (letter or number style) used to write on the coin may change, even if the rest of the coin (picture, denomination, etc.) is the same. This can be hard to spot unless you compare 2 coins side-by-side, or use a reference guide that mentions these changes.

Minor design changes - Sometimes a coin's picture may undergo a slight change - made a little bigger, a little smaller, or simply re-done so that it is slightly different than it was before. These can be very hard to spot.

Alignment changes - I noticed recently that Switzerland's coin alignment (see my earlier post about terminology) changed from coin to medal in the 1980s. Except for the alignment, the coin design (pictures and etc.) look the same.

For these kinds of small changes, it is up to you to decide if it is worth having each variety in your collection or not (they very rarely affect the value of a coin).

Coin Collecting Terminology

Coin collecting has its own lexicon that you'll find it helpful to become familiar with. These words help collectors accurately discuss coins. If you spend much time around other collectors, looking at coins, reading about coins, or even shopping for coins, you've probably run into a few of these. If you haven't, then learning about them ahead of time will prepare you for when they do come up. This is just a starting list; in future posts, I'll explain more coin vocabulary.

The collecting or study of money is called numismatics (pronounced "noo-miz-ma-ticks"). Coin collecting does not have its own word, so numismatics can mean someone who studies money, someone who collects currency (paper money), someone who collects tokens, someone who collects coins, etc. The most common meaning, however, is the collecting of money or money-like items (tokens, medals). In a library catalog, searching for "numismatics" is going to take you directly to money and coin related items. It's good to be familiar with this term so that if you see things like the "American Numismatic Association" or a magazine called "Numismatic News", you'll have a better idea what they are.

Someone who collects or studies money is called a numismatist (pronounced "noo-miz-ma-tist"). If you've started your own world collection, you are now a numismatist. That sure sounds fancier than calling yourself a "coin collector".

The parts of a coin are important to know for both describing coins and understanding what other people are saying about them. A coin has 2 sides, or faces. Most people just call these "front" and "back", or "heads" and "tails", but the correct terms are obverse (front/heads) and reverse (back/tails). For most coins the obverse is the "heads" side - the side with a picture of a person, or animal, or coat-of-arms - and the reverse is the "tails" side. For coins that don't have an obvious obverse or reverse, I'm unsure how you pick which is the "front" and which is the "back". A coin also has an edge, which is the (usually) flat part that runs around the circumference of the coin. Sometimes the edge of a coin can be as distinctive as its obverse or reverse - keep an eye out for coins that have words, symbols, or a design on their edge (like the United States' Presidential $1 coins).

A coin's alignment means how the obverse and reverse are lined up with each other. Each side of a coin has its own "up" direction, where the picture or writing is right-side up. Sometimes this "up" direction is the same on both sides, and sometimes it is opposite. Hold a coin so that one side is right-side up and flip it left-to-right (horizontally) to view the back. If the back is still right-side up, then the coin has medal alignment.  If the back is now upside-down, then the coin has coin alignment (if you flip the coin top-to-bottom, or vertically, then the back appears right-side-up). On modern coins, any alignment besides these 2 is usually an error. If you have trouble remembering the difference between coin and medal alignment, think about a large medal hanging from a ribbon around someone's neck.  To view the back, you would turn it side-to-side - and the back would still be still right-side up so you could read it. That's medal alignment.

High-grade (left) vs low-grade (right)

A coin's condition or grade is an indication of how good (or bad) it is.  A coin with a high grade would be clean and shiny, with few scratches and very little wearing.  A coin with a low grade might be dirty or stained, have a lot of scratches or nicks/cuts, and/or be worn down (so that the original intricate details of the coin are gone). In the United States, we usually use a grading scale that goes from Poor (P) to Brilliant Uncirculated (BU):

• Poor (P)
• Fair (F)
• Almost Good (AG)
• Good (G)
• Very Good (VG)
• Fine (F)
• Very Fine (VF)
• Extra Fine (EF or XF)
• Almost Uncirculated (AU)
• Uncirculated (U or Unc.)
• Brilliant Uncirculated (BU)

Picking the correct grade for a coin is subjective unless the grading is done by a professional. Wikipedia has a basic overview of the coin grading scale that may help you grade your own coins.

A possible cull quality coin

You may occasionally see the word cull in association with coins. A cull coin is usually a coin that is so damaged as to be non-collectible. It may have nearly all the design worn off, it may have a large cut or gash, it may be missing part of the coin, or it may have one or more holes drilled into it (such as to hang it from a necklace). If you are shopping online, you generally don't want cull coins.

A coin's composition is the metal (or metals) it is made of. Coins can be made out of many different metals - aluminum, bronze, stainless steel, zinc, copper, etc. - and are sometimes a mixture of 2 or more metals (such as United States pennies, which have a zinc core with a copper coating). Composition may be given in percentages ("92.5% silver, 7.5% copper" or ".9250 silver") or just the metal ("zinc-copper"). Sometimes the composition of a coin will change (due to changes in metal prices) from one year to the next, without the coin's design changing.