Found this today. I think I see a 1938 or 1936. Do you see it? Also, how do you clean it? Will virgin olive oil work? It isn't worth much I this shape.
Found this today. I think I see a 1938 or 1936. Do you see it? Also, how do you clean it? Will virgin olive oil work? It isn't worth much I this shape.
Found this today. I think I see a 1938 or 1936. Do you see it? Also, how do you clean it? Will virgin olive oil work? It isn't worth much I this shape.
....I’ve also had good success soaking nickels in Gojo (the hand cleaner) for a day and scrubbing with a toothbrush, repeating that process until you achieve the look you want - but I’ve only experimented with that method on pre-1960 Jeffersons.
It looks like you already rinsed it with water. I've never found water to help with details on old nickels, and the flaking makes it worse. I leave them be until I get home and have time to work on them. I let the dirt dry out and the next step is cleaning with a blunt wooden toothpick or skewer. If I want to go farther, then it depends on the reason and the coin's condition. It might be a soak in olive oil, or tumbling, or steel wool, or repeated soaks in Gojo.
I found it in soupy, bog like ground. Water was in the hole.
That's both fortunate and unfortunate. Once they get wet and oxidize there's not a lot of "cleaning" options. You can polish them through mechanical abrasion, such as steel wool or tumbling, checking regularly for loss of detail.
Or, you can try daily soaks in GoJo, which works through some chemical reaction to remove the "rust" and a bit of abrasion from the pumice. There are some posts about it if you search the board for "gojo". Here's a youtube video about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgUBjaEAFpA