Jeff12633 Posted March 8, 2020 Share Posted March 8, 2020 I bought this for about $7 on Ebay knowing it was probably either fake or aggressively cleaned. Any opinions? The sides of the rim are very dark and the deeper details are quite gunky compared to the bright fields, which makes me suspect the latter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JKK Posted March 10, 2020 Share Posted March 10, 2020 (edited) I'm not expert in these, but I think: It is unlikely someone would counterfeit heavily worn farthings. I don't know of any specialness about the issue that would make it exceptional. The color shows bad tarnish in the protected areas, unnatural salmon pink everywhere else. It's reasonable to imagine that part of the detail loss emanates from abrasive cleaning. Whoever cleaned this was an enormous mental defective, making it look bad without even removing all the corrosion. My starting sense is to think that green stuff is copper corrosion, but I wonder if it might be PVC slime remnants. If NGC had a grading designation of INEPTLY WHIZZED BY UTTER TOOL, this coin would be a candidate. I'd say you overpaid, but you did so with eyes wide open, so that was a reasonable choice. If it were mine, I'd give it an acetone soak. Logic: if the green were PVC slime, that would remove it; if not, the simple soak won't be harmful at this point. If that doesn't remove the corrosion, then it's up to you whether it's worth the effort required to try knocking it off in the same way that works for bronze disease. I am not sure that would work, but I am also not sure it would make the coin any worse. Edited March 10, 2020 by JKK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
