Went back and forth between hand-cleaning a Roman coin or using electrolysis, picked the slow method and it actually revealed a tiny mint mark I would have scrubbed off.

The electrolysis would have zapped it in 20 minutes but I chickened out and spent 3 evenings with distilled water and a soft brush, which uncovered a small 'SC' under the emperor's chin on this 4th century bronze follis I dug up near York last summer has anyone else had a hard call like that between speed and safety on old finds?

3 comments

3 Comments

riley_miller2525d ago

Three nights of spa treatment? You basically gave that coin a fancy bath while I bet the electrolysis would have cleaned it perfectly fine. I've zapped a few corroded Roman bronzes from the same era and never lost a detail because my setup runs low voltage and uses a graphite rod. The mint mark was probably there all along under that crust, you might have just warmed it up enough with the water to let it pop.

fiona_murphy14d ago

@riley_miller25 I gotta disagree with you on this one. Electrolysis can work fine if you know what you're doing, but it's a gamble on old coins like this follis. I've seen people blast off surface detail with even low voltage setups because the crust is fused to the metal in weird ways. The slow soak method is boring as hell but it lets you control every bit of gunk removal. That mint mark might have been there all along, sure, but hand cleaning let me see it exactly as the die cutter left it 1700 years ago. Speed ain't everything when you're dealing with a piece of history that fragile.

grace_gonzalez4625d ago

Three nights of spa treatment for a coin older than your grandma's grandma. Guess the mint mark got tired of hiding and decided to come out and say hi.