How to clean Gold

[Pete]

16 minutes ago, Pipers said:

NGC, PCGS and the others offer a cleaning service, f-cking hell.  They will charge for anything that can get there more money for.  How about a first strike, oh no they all ready do that, even though the first minted coins are at the bottom of the bucket at the mint not the top!!!  

When our lovely Royal Mint issued their first 999 silver Brits in 2013 ( rather than their super 958 alloy Brits which are to this day stunning and rugged ) I bought over 100 from the first batches and all looked as if they had crossed multiple barbed wire fences. This was one coin that even eBay sellers were warning buyers to beware as they were pretty much ALL total cr*ap. Bottom of the bucket seems about right as some faces showed imprints of the reeded edges. If anyone got an MS70 for a First Strike it would be extremely rare indeed, or more likely does not exist !!

[Melon]

What about for removing dirt ingrained on the ridges of a coin? Not a rare coin, but nevertheless I wouldn't want to needlessly damage something historic. I know enough to not go at it with a toothbrush! 😄

Wouldn't mind a non-damaging trick to just get rid of surface dirt and shine it up a bit! 

[5huggy]

3 hours ago, Melon said:

What about for removing dirt ingrained on the ridges of a coin? Not a rare coin, but nevertheless I wouldn't want to needlessly damage something historic. I know enough to not go at it with a toothbrush! 😄

Wouldn't mind a non-damaging trick to just get rid of surface dirt and shine it up a bit! 

I use one of these for NON gradeable but still collectible coins - - HIGHLY recommend - - ONLY use DISTILLED, De-ionised water

[Pipers]

6 hours ago, 5huggy said:

I use one of these for NON gradeable but still collectible coins - - HIGHLY recommend - - ONLY use DISTILLED, De-ionised water

To let people know to, you can use rain water.  

[RoslandGold]

We tried many different ways for cleaning coins. Baking Soda, Salt, Gold Cleaner, Polishing, ultrasonic cleaners, ... 

At the end the salt + alumium foil was the only way not to damage the coin. We damaged some coins doing this when we tried to dry it by hand. 

But the problem is, that the salt is still on the coin and scratches will appear. Just let it airtry or use a very weak fan. 

[Frenchie]

18 hours ago, RoslandGold said:

Hello guys, since we had a thread where a member asked if grading makes sense, i told him to clean the coin before. 

Since noone knew the trick with aluminium foil, salt and water, i promised to show a video about that.

I used 2 very damaged liberty 2017 1 oz gold coins. The first coin had a really huge red dot which looked like a hole. 

The second one was scratched horrible. Im not an expert in creating videos and i made it at home with my mobile phone, but i am sure you will like the result.

Most of the time scratched and red dotted coins (as BU) get PR69-70 DCAM gradings (even when they are not PROOF).

The video can be found on https://www.rosland.link/videos/gold-oxidation-entfernen/ because it's too big to post it n the forum. (500mb~).

Attached is the picture BEFORE cleaning.

 

and this was after cleaning.. The very big red dot(s) are almost not visible anymore. It may take 1-2 more attempts until get them removed by 100%. The other coin looks great.

There are no more scratches on the coins. It's just from the camera/salt which need be cleaned.

 

Edit: If the red dots are not fully removed, you can also use a very hot lighter. Gold has a diferrent melt temperature and will not be affected at all. The red dots will be burned out and you wont see any damaged spots.

Thanks for this interesting video, but you seem not very careful with your coins  ! They are proof and and I can't imagine treating mine and not getting more scratches with such manutention and the way you dry them !

Do you use cold or hot water  ?  Don't you rince them with distilled water ?

It would have been nice also to show a stable, focused and longer close up look at the coins before and after the process 

[RoslandGold]

2 minutes ago, Frenchie said:

Thanks for this interesting video, but you seem not very careful with your coins  ! They are proof and and I can't imagine treating mine and not getting more scratches with such manutention and the way you dry them !

Do you use cold or hot water  ?  Don't you rince them with distilled water ?

It would have been nice also to show a stable, focused and longer close up look at the coins before and after the process 

Hello Frenchie,

as i wrote i did it at home because a member asked for that. Those coins are already registered for melting. 

Liberty High Relief coins are _NOT_ proof. They are BU and got the worst quality for all coins ever minted from the  US Mint.

I use only cold water, and usually i let them air dry. In the video i dried it in a wrong way, but i wanted to show the results afap.

Ill create another video in our photo studio/box in the next days.

[sovereignsteve]

@RoslandGold

thanks for the video. A couple of questions;

Does the coin need to be in contact with the foil?

Is the amount of salt used critical?

Does it remove fingerprints?

Thanks

[TheGeneral]

Thanks for the video. 

[ShaolinStacker]

On 08/12/2019 at 12:43, RoslandGold said:

Since i restore alot coins by PCGS and take high resolution photos before and after, it looks like that they just clean it like i did in the video. Maybe they use some special cleaner, but i found some very small scratches after restoring by pcgs very often.

In 50% of the cases, restore increases the grade by at least 1 grading level.

69 to 70 is "usually" not possible. After doing the salt-alumium bath (ms69) and sending them back to pcgs again, i usually get MS70.

Very often i get PR instead of MS after using the trick.

 

Edit: Actually all of the coins never got red dots again after cleaning. After they are slabbed by PCGS and NGC they always keep the same quality. 

 

LOL PCGS is not going to turn a BU MS coin magically into a PR (proof coin) 

"Very often i get PR instead of MS after using the trick."

[RoslandGold]

11 minutes ago, ShaolinStacker said:

LOL PCGS is not going to turn a BU MS coin magically into a PR (proof coin) 

"Very often i get PR instead of MS after using the trick."

wanna bet? 😉

Its not magically.

[ShaolinStacker]

33 minutes ago, RoslandGold said:

wanna bet? 😉

Its not magically.

PR stands for PROOF.. MS implies a standard BU coin. Unless they made a labeling error they do not grade MS coins as PR

[RoslandGold]

14 minutes ago, ShaolinStacker said:

PR stands for PROOF.. MS implies a standard BU coin. Unless they made a labeling error they do not grade MS coins as PR

as i said.. after cleaning they look like polished coins. Sometimes it happens that PCGS grade them as PR. Happened with a somalia 2020 Gold (1OZ) coin a few days ago. 

Could you please tell me whats listed on the picture?

https://www.pcgseurope.com/Cert/38306387

Usually we tell them when its bu, but this happen very often.. and we send thousands of coins. 

[ShaolinStacker]

6 hours ago, RoslandGold said:

as i said.. after cleaning they look like polished coins. Sometimes it happens that PCGS grade them as PR. Happened with a somalia 2020 Gold (1OZ) coin a few days ago. 

Could you please tell me whats listed on the picture?

https://www.pcgseurope.com/Cert/38306387

Usually we tell them when its bu, but this happen very often.. and we send thousands of coins. 

I would say its an error Label as that is not a proof coin. 

[RoslandGold]

24 minutes ago, ShaolinStacker said:

I would say its an error Label as that is not a proof coin. 

Happens often. I mean.. color is color, isnt it?

https://www.pcgseurope.com/Cert/38146123

 

Edit.. tbh.. pcgs grade 99 percent of the coins as they should be. Ngc is maybe 80 percent since we tried removing the blister, cleaned it and resubmitted it very often for testing. They almost got a better grade every time.

 

The ec8 coins are more or less exclusive from scottsdale mint in a proof like Quality made for rosland.

 

[Melon]

2 hours ago, ShaolinStacker said:

I would say its an error Label as that is not a proof coin. 

I think you've got the wrong impression of what he said. He was claiming, with evidence, that the grading companies sometimes give PR ratings to BU coins after he's used this cleaning method. He's not claiming the coins are magically transformed into proofs. He's claiming the method is effective enough to result in some graders marking them as proofs. Obviously it's an error to do so, nobody is disagreeing on that.  

[Murph]

Afaik the somalia 1 oz gold coin is only available in BU so how could they label it as proof?

I find it hard to believe they sometimes grade bu coins as proofs considering proofs are usually what is often referred to as cameo now.  It's not like older coins where there was less difference between proof and normal strikes.  Mints usually don't strike proofs and proof like coins in the same issue and weight.

Of course perhaps graders don't pay as much attention to modern coins and the US graders can be quite poor when it comes to non US coins misidentifying coins more often than you'd expect for a service you're paying for.

 

Cleaning and polishing coins doesn't work in general because even though you could use a power tool and a polishing powder down to say 30k diamond paste you can never polish the whole surface to the same standard so there will be differences when looked at under magnification.  In between or close to letters for example compared to the main field.

As previously stated the pelican example is a labelling error and is listed as mint state on the database page itself.  Anyone looking it up to see how many there are or wondering why this seems to be an otherwise unknown issue will see it is a MS coin and I'd think they would relabel it for free since they made the error.

[Murph]

4 hours ago, RoslandGold said:

Happens often. I mean.. color is color, isnt it?

https://www.pcgseurope.com/Cert/38146123

 

 

Which is yet another reason not to buy graded modern bullion coins or pay for them to be graded.

Probably far too many issues, coins being sent for grading and few workers so mistakes creep in when they might spend a couple of minutes looking at coins they have never seen before.  I wonder if they give the people grading modern issues a couple of days training and then throw them into grading all these new coins?

[ShaolinStacker]

4 hours ago, RoslandGold said:

Happens often. I mean.. color is color, isnt it?

https://www.pcgseurope.com/Cert/38146123

 

Edit.. tbh.. pcgs grade 99 percent of the coins as they should be. Ngc is maybe 80 percent since we tried removing the blister, cleaned it and resubmitted it very often for testing. They almost got a better grade every time.

 

The ec8 coins are more or less exclusive from scottsdale mint in a proof like Quality made for rosland.

 

Those Scottsdale Mint coins are PL coins not BU. Every Scottsdale coin I've ever graded has been a PL

[RoslandGold]

3 hours ago, ShaolinStacker said:

Those Scottsdale Mint coins are PL coins not BU. Every Scottsdale coin I've ever graded has been a PL

EC8 coins are officially released as BU. We request PL coins and got some which were "at least what sm wrote" polished and costs a few dollars more/coin.

But we stopped now since pcgs started from one day to another grading those coins as MS (after they were graded as PR already).

Somalia 2020 were only minted in BU yet. This is, why grading a 2020 somalia elephant as PR 68 coin was funny. 

Previous Elephants (2019 or older) were graded as PR as well.