More Pennies

[jelida]

On 12/26/2020 at 2:49 PM, alfnail said:

I have CP1847MJ, pictured below. It has pretty good detail, but does have the verdigris as can be seen. I keep coming back to the question of whether I should try to remove it / improve the coin if possible. As yet I haven't been brave enough to attempt anything myself; I have never tried verdigris removal before, and would first want to have practice attempts on less valuable similar pieces anyway. There's also a part of me saying leave it alone....but then I'm worried that the verdigris may develop.

I would welcome views from members on this please, thanks.  

I must admit if it were mine I’d try to remove the verdigris. How I would try to achieve that would depend on the appearance under the microscope. Treatment would be somewhere between Verdicare and picking with a fine needle, and brick acid! I have found mildly diluted phosphoric acid on a cotton bud works well, the verd fizzes away yet the metal does not seem affected. The coin does then need re-toning however, a quick start can be made with dry flowers of sulphur in an ice-cream container, covered with tissue and the coin placed on the tissue and lidded and placed in a warm place (windowsill, radiator). Check every few hours. But as always, experiment on low value coins first.

Jerry

[VickySilver]

I suppose olive oil with cotton bud GENTLE application would be relatively safe, with the residual oil removed with liberal rinse and soft detergent with more water irrigation and tamp dry with the high nap white cotton towel....

 

Don't blame you for being a bit nervous. Good score on that coin, and one I'd be happy to own.

[blakeyboy]

Hmmm...copper not bronze.....hmmm...even more with copper, avoid a steel tool at all costs!

Let's assume the striking process work hardened the copper, and let's assume this coin has never been heated,

sooo....if you make a copper pick from a piece of electrical solid core wire, 1 to 1.5mm say,

file the tip as a tiny chisel, the anneal by heating the tip till it's really hot and quenching in water.

Your tool should now be softer than the coin surface, and you can slowly chip the verdigris away.

If you have some wire that is in very fine strands, this will make a very good soft wire brush to tidy up the surface

if you anneal it too. To do this, you will need to strip the insulation back an inch, heat very very quickly on a flame,

plunge into cold water, then slide a tube over the strands to control how long you want the 'brush' to be.

 

This works.

The olive oil will help a lot- it will soften the verdigris if the coin is allowed to soak overnight, and any lubtication 

will make the scraping even kinder.

[1949threepence]

4 hours ago, Martinminerva said:

You pipped me to that one, Jerry! I was just "buying it now" when it closed!

Also, did anyone on here get this:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Queen-Victoria-Penny-1861-/393052202355?hash=item5b83bca573%3Ag%3A0uYAAOSwzEpf03PO&nma=true&si=HsvO6lNGBPRb%2BAmvjfay%2BxU5S9A%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

It is an 1861 6+F, detector find but nice. It actually sold for a best offer of £100. I also put an offer in, but less and was beaten, but that's how I know what it actually went for. If you did get it, can you post better pics, perhaps?

 

Nice example of an F32. Pity he's got his thumb overshadowing part of it. 

[jelida]

18 minutes ago, blakeyboy said:

Hmmm...copper not bronze.....hmmm...even more with copper, avoid a steel tool at all costs!

I don’t actually agree with this, Blake, though of course there are caveats. Personally I find wood, copper too soft to  budge most true verdigris (as opposed to that green waxy ‘protoverd’), and I tried sharpened copper wire and found it tended to simply burnish the surface I was working on with a thin layer of copper. I find I always come back to the same steel needle mounted in a plastic handle that I have used for thirty years, with its perfectly smooth point, and occasionally hypodermic needles with their chisel like tips . I actually find it quite difficult to mark copper or bronze with the former unless through lack of care, but a hypodermic can certainly do damage. But then again I am using a binocular microscope usually at x40 where a letter fills the field of view, and I can see exactly what I am doing. And I am happy to take many hours, and give Verdicare time to work, often overnight. Believe me, if I were to visibly damage a rare coin during conservation (for when we negate verdigris on copper alloy we are preventing future problems) then I would not do it ! But always act within your competence, and get a powerful magnifier. 
 

Jerry 
 

[blakeyboy]

How odd, Jerry- I've always had excellent results, unless of course you have that  'Hereford Clag' - a particularly evil hard accretion

that exists in your part of the world, and I've just got soft southern stuff.

Wormelow tump is a pile of the stuff left over from the Bronze Age.....

I did notice a change when I left Worcestershire years ago- I put it down to the M1 being nearby....:)

[mick1271]

This one had surface Verd spots on both sides . Cleaned it off with acetone and a cotton bud , then treated it with Verdicare .It left the black staining spots where the verd was , but it definitely improved it and didn't harm the lustre .

[alfnail]

Many thanks to everyone who has replied about my 1847.

No one is telling me to just leave it 'as is', so I guess I will need to do something...........but not brave enough to have a go myself at the moment.

The verdigris does look quite hard, so I don't think it will be an easy job to remove.

I think in the first instance I may ask a TPG to advise, and perhaps provide me with a cost. Apart from the member who emailed me about that possibility does anyone else have any experience of passing to a TPG and getting good results with this type of thing? I'm thinking the coin must be worth spending a little bit if necessary just to get it done professionally by someone with experience, unless anyone here has had a bad experience which might put me off.

Thanks again

[PWA 1967]

Having a look its already been cleaned and the stuff thats left maybe rock hard / live.

Scratching it off with a pin and retoning it is probably the only option ,putting verdicare or acid on though will at least kill it but wont remove it and better looking black IMO.

I doubt a TPG would touch it as to far gone and wont do anything with damage ,graffiti or corrosion but does not cost anything to ask.

I think i would politely ask Jerry to work his magic and give him a good few quid if he is kind enough and can find the time , as you have the confidence he knows what he is doing

With the green / blue gone and the coin retoned would be a big improvement.

Otherwise just put it away and dont look at it 😃

Sorry if i have dragged you in Jerry and put your name forward 👍

 

Edited December 28, 2020 by PWA 1967

[blakeyboy]

My system works.

Really well.

You do need patience and skill.

Anyone going near a copper surface with a steel tool is asking for trouble.

NEVER EVER do it.

To shift a clag, or deposit, you choose a tool softer than the coin surface.

That's why soft brass works on bronze.

But for hard copper, use softened copper.

[alfnail]

8 hours ago, PWA 1967 said:

Having a look its already been cleaned and the stuff thats left maybe rock hard / live.

Scratching it off with a pin and retoning it is probably the only option ,putting verdicare or acid on though will at least kill it but wont remove it and better looking black IMO.

I doubt a TPG would touch it as to far gone and wont do anything with damage ,graffiti or corrosion but does not cost anything to ask.

I think i would politely ask Jerry to work his magic and give him a good few quid if he is kind enough and can find the time , as you have the confidence he knows what he is doing

With the green / blue gone and the coin retoned would be a big improvement.

Otherwise just put it away and dont look at it 😃

Sorry if i have dragged you in Jerry and put your name forward 👍

 

Thanks Pete, the coin will be winging it's way to Jerry in the next couple of days, he has kindly offered to give an expert opinion.

[InforaPenny]

I’d like to point out that an article on 1860 ‘early obverse’ beaded border bronze pennies published in the British Numismatic Journal is now available online (free PDF download) at:

https://www.britnumsoc.org/images/PDFs/BNJ_2017/14_Holland_1843.pdf

Wishing you a Happy New Year!

Best Regards,

InforaPenny

 

[Cliff]

Thanks for the heads up.

[blakeyboy]

The three most aposite words in what Jerry said are " perfectly smooth point"...

I suppose you are almost then grinding it off rather than scraping - a bit like a pestle and mortar.

Only problem is in the corners.

Another problem, which is where a chisel tip of the right profile comes in,

is not digging into holes in the surface where the corrosion has eaten in - never looks good.

[secret santa]

On 12/26/2020 at 10:39 AM, secret santa said:

I have just sent  Pete's and Ian's pictures to Michael for his comments.

Michael now agrees that this 1889 wide date with the raised numeral 9 appears to be paired with obverse R (12) and should thus be reclassified as 1889Ad.

There is nothing to preclude this reverse from being paired with obverse S but there don't seem to be any confirmed examples.

[alfnail]

What do you make of this, was on ebay earlier today?

[jelida]

Well, if genuine, somebody has a bargain. But the ‘0’ looks a little asymmetric to me. Did you buy it?

Jerry

[1949threepence]

Is this something akin to Batty's much vaunted 1850?

"1850.    The existence of a penny, either proof or for circulation of this date is not accepted. Batty, it is true, included one (No 5319) which he believed to be authentic, but examination of the actual specimen shows it to be a rather clumsy fabrication from an ordinary penny of 1859. Apart from the botched date, the other details prove this" - sold at Sothebys, together with an 1860/59 on 16/11/1927.

Bramah 1929

[alfnail]

11 hours ago, jelida said:

Well, if genuine, somebody has a bargain. But the ‘0’ looks a little asymmetric to me. Did you buy it?

Jerry

No, I didn't buy it, but probably could have done as I saw it as soon as it came on, on an auction not BIN,

Zooming in on the available pictures it did not look authentic to me, but I asked the seller for better date pictures anyway, and was considering bidding as a curiosity. It was then sold before receiving better date pictures from the seller. 

On the picture that was available (see below) I could NOT see w.w. , but could see what looked like metalwork around the circumference.

This morning the seller has said the following:-

I bought it in March 1992 for £20.00 from Seabys supposedly part of old man Seabys own collection

[1949threepence]

1 hour ago, alfnail said:

No, I didn't buy it, but probably could have done as I saw it as soon as it came on, on an auction not BIN,

Zooming in on the available pictures it did not look authentic to me, but I asked the seller for better date pictures anyway, and was considering bidding as a curiosity. It was then sold before receiving better date pictures from the seller. 

On the picture that was available (see below) I could NOT see w.w. , but could see what looked like metalwork around the circumference.

This morning the seller has said the following:-

I bought it in March 1992 for £20.00 from Seabys supposedly part of old man Seabys own collection

What are you saying it is or might be, Ian?

To me it looks like a tooled coin. 

Picture too blurry to come to a more definitive conclusion. 

[alfnail]

Picture is blurry Mike, but think good enough to be fairly confident it has been tooled. Also if had been authentic then would have expected a w.w........ which looks to be missing. That points the finger to a tooled 1858 or 1859 to me.

[Rob]

It could well be the Batty coin, with the 9 altered to a 0 by removing part of the loop and closing the circle at the 9 tail. The join at 10 o'clock suggests that is one end of the added bit, but the bottom is a bit blurred.

That coin was in Peck's collection, but I can't find any reference to it being sold by Spink out of the Circular, nor an article in the Bulletin if HAS bought it from Spink.

[1949threepence]

1 hour ago, alfnail said:

Picture is blurry Mike, but think good enough to be fairly confident it has been tooled. Also if had been authentic then would have expected a w.w........ which looks to be missing. That points the finger to a tooled 1858 or 1859 to me.

I wondered about the WW Ian, but couldn't really determine whether it was there or not. Can't see any trace of it, but wasn't 100% sure.

[jelida]

4 hours ago, alfnail said:

I bought it in March 1992 for £20.00 from Seabys supposedly part of old man Seabys own collection

I would say the fact it came from Seabys for £20 in 1992 confirms it not to be genuine, even then a unique coin would have fetched hundreds.

Jerry

[secret santa]

I also think that, given that fact that this style of date numeral 5 didn't appear until 1853 at the earliest and is quite different from the various styles of 5 used in 1851, makes it quite likely that this is not genuine.