Coin Chemistry (Cleaning and Preserving)

[jamess]

There are both good and bad books about coins out there, and this one definitely belongs to the second category.



Coin Chemistry is actually a collection of separate articles, most of which have been published in Coin World

magazine. As a result, there is a lot of overlapping material that reduces the 72 pages book to something like 40 to

50 pages. It is not just the same information presented over and over again, but the author uses the exact same

words and phrases so by the time you finish the book you will be able to quote him pretty accurately.



Moreover, if you omit the blank pages between the articles, the sources that take a lot of up space and reduce the

font size (which is more appropriate for childrens’ books), you will probably come up with less that 35 pages and if

you leave out the pictures too, you will end up with 15 to 20 pages at best. There are also some articles completely

unrelated to coin chemistry and coin preservation, such as the one about the debasement of the US currency(!). In

any case, the book offers less than a coin magazine but at a much higher cost and I definitely wouldn’t

recommend it for the Value Award.



To make matters worse, from beginning to end the Coin Chemistry advertises instercept shield products and even

includes an appendix about them.



Having said that, I did find interesting information in this book and the pictures of the author’s experiments with

coins are pretty impressive too. Unfortunately, I can’t recommend this book and instead of reading it, let me just

some up the author’s conclusions.



1. Air includes particles that cause chemical reactions to the coin’s surface

2. Toning = tarnish = bad

3. Nothing is better then intercept shield products when it comes to coin storage

4. Nothing is better then intercept shield products when it comes to coin storage

[siddarth]

Straight away I will now follow this rule of cleaning.

[jamess]

Well this rule is not the mandatory one, But ya you can follow this for the good results.