Tips on Cleaning Your Finds

NOTE: DO NOT CLEAN OLD COINS AND TOKENS THAT YOU SUSPECT ARE VALUABLE! It will cut their
value in half! Ask a local coin dealer first.

Baking soda method
This is a very easy to do cleaning method. However, it doesn't work on everything,
and it is mostly used to clean old silver coins that you find in the ground.
Just wet the coin and dip it in some baking soda and clean it with an old
toothbrush. This will take the tarnish off, and make your coin shiny without
scratching it.

Tumbling method

Use a rock tumbler if you want to clean lots of old coins at once! All those clad
coins you've been finding! It will cost you around $60.00 for a rock tumbler, or you
might be able to find a cheaper one on Ebay.com (But try not to get the plastic
ones, they make too much noise while tumbling.)

How to tumble old coins: Next time your in a pet store, purchase some fish tank
gravel. Put your coins in the tumbler, add the gravel, and about 2 tablespoons of
sand to make the tumbler about 3/4 full. Fill with water (to a little below the top of
the gravel) and add a touch of liquid detergent. Put the lid on and shake it to
distribute the coins and gravel evenly.

Let it tumble for about an hour. Open it up and drain off the dirty water. Refill with
clean water, add a touch of liquid detergent and tumble for another couple hours
or overnight.

Open it up and pour into a strainer or screen that has holes large enough to let
your gravel and sand fall through, but not your coins. Rinse the coins well, and
spread them out on newspaper or an old towel to dry. We tumble brass and
copper things that have corrosion on them too, like buckles and buttons and keys,
etc. Some people like to separate their copper coins from their silver coins when
they tumble them. We have tried it both ways, and if you decide to tumble them
together, don't let them tumble too long, or your silver (or clad) coins will turn a
permanent copper color.

Ammonia method.
Fill a small jar with ammonia, add your gold or silver items, put on the lid and let sit
for an hour or so. Open it up and polish each piece with a soft cloth. This works
best for gold. We have tried old silver coins that we found in the salt water, but
afterwards you need to use the baking soda and a toothbrush also to get all the
black off.

Jewelry Cleaners
There are plenty of cleaning methods and products out there for cleaning your
silver and gold rings, some of them can cost you a pretty buck, and others are no
more then a couple of dollars. Here is a few products that we use all the time that
you may want to try for yourself.

NEVR-DULL is a cotton wadding polish that cleans and polishes all metals
including:
silver, gold, brass, copper, pewter, glass, steel, aluminum and chromium.
Removes rust and tar, leaves no deposits in the crevices of metal work.
Directions: Tear off a small portion of the wadding and rub the article to be
cleaned until all dirt is removed. Then finish with with a dry, soft cloth to obtain a
brilliant, lasting luster Nontoxic, and we only paid $5.99.
BLITZ Jewelry Care Cloths.

This polishing cloth is the best way to brighten your silver or gold rings and chains.
They already have the polish in the cloth! It is two pieces of soft cloth sewn
together in the middle. One cloth has the cleaning agent and the other cloth is for
buffing. We were recently introduced to these fantastic little cloths at our club
meeting. The best news is that they are so affordable, costing only about $2.99,
and you can get them at Walmart.

Blue Magic Metal Polish
This is a product we use all the time to clean our gold rings and other jewelry. Safe
and nonabrasive, removes oxidation and tarnish. Works on gold, silver, chrome,
aluminum, copper, brass, stainless steel.
It kind of reminds me of toothpaste. Blue magic liquid metal polish works like magic
on virtually every surface.
Directions: Shake well. Apply small amount with soft cloth. Rub until a black film
appears. Buff off with a clean soft cloth or buffer. Blue magic leaves a protective
film. We paid $3.99 for it.

Electrolysis Cleaning
When building a electrolysis machine to clean metal, a better transformer to use is
an old AT type computer power supply not a ATX power supply just cut a yellow
and a black wire from one of the four wire plug strip and attach clips. Yellow is
POSITIVE (+), Black is ground.

In a plastic tub mix tap water, a tablespoon of salt per 8 oz of water, attach yellow
lead to a stainless steel piece put in water on one side of the bucket attach black
lead to the metal find, put in the water on other side of bucket.

Do not let the leads touch each other, turn on the power and it will bubble give it a
little time and the dirt and rust will come off find and be on the stainless metal.

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