Some help please

[Guest aprilia]

Hello all, i'm new here and desperately in need of some advice/help.

We have recently come into the possesion of a load of old coins ranging from George 111 circa 1797, old Victorian pennies and half crowns. Amongst all these was what looks like an emmbossed medal with what looks like Shakespeare as the "head". This and alot of the other coins are black and need cleaning to be able to identify them better, but i don't want to ruin any of them as i know they have some value.

Any help or advice you could give would be much appreciated.

PS. Will attach a picture when i have figuered out how to do it

[Guest aprilia]

Some pictures

http://img45.imageshack.us/img45/5382/dscf0061sd2.jpg

http://img235.imageshack.us/img235/2113/dscf0062oc3.jpg

[Dg43]

Hello all, i'm new here and desperately in need of some advice/help.

We have recently come into the possesion of a load of old coins ranging from George 111 circa 1797, old Victorian pennies and half crowns. Amongst all these was what looks like an emmbossed medal with what looks like Shakespeare as the "head". This and alot of the other coins are black and need cleaning to be able to identify them better, but i don't want to ruin any of them as i know they have some value.

Any help or advice you could give would be much appreciated.

Hi aprilia

Firstly, Never clean a coin or medal, you will destroy the patina, and thereby the value and desirability.

Not all coins are valuable because they are old, it will depend upon rarity and condition.

Worn coins are relatively worthless unless they are very rare dates.

I have no doubt that others will be able to give you more advice when they get up and about. In the meantime this site may help; from your pictures the coins appear quite worn, ie F (fine) condition or less.

Regards

David

http://www.tclayton.demon.co.uk/values/coins.html

[Guest aprilia]

Cheers for the reply DG. Alot of the coins are very worn, but some of them are just so black that they need a good, proffesional clean in some way so as to preserve their(if any) value. Some of the pennies have been used so much over many years that they are smooth discs, but others are pretty good.

Some of the coins i can't even identify, even though i was born early enough to be using them when they where legal tender

[Chris Perkins]

The pictures were very small Aprilia, but from what I could see, I wouldn't get your hopes up. It looks like the usual accumulation of the odd GIII copper mixed with mostly later copper and bronze, all of which looks to be quite worn. Try to link to larger pictures if you can and I'll tell you if any of the darker ones are worth doing anything with.