Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
There are some silver cleaning or brightening products like the one above that you shouldn't use on corroded found reales. As advertised, the product does add silver to the surface of silver objects but you might not want to add silver to some objects, including reales.
On corroded objects, the added silver pools in pits and low spots obscuring designs. The added silver is bright and shiny, which might seem like a good thing, but it can actually obscure the details on cobs and other rough corroded surfaces, especially settling in depressions, making the object appear splotchy.
It should not be used on other collectible coins in general. Coin collectors are very particular and cleaning or otherwise changing to the surface of a fine coin can definitely destroy the coin's value.
The product does add silver to the surface of some objects, and it might work well on some types of things, like maybe an old plated tea pot.
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I do recommend checking out the CoinCommunity site. It provides a number of forums, including one for errors and varieties of US coins. Reading the forum will alert you to the type of mint errors it is possible to find. The site is very educational.
It is also a great place to get opinions on coins of your own. If you post excellent pictures, you'll get excellent feedback. They are very particular about posted pictures so make sure you know what they expect before posting.
You can check books on coin errors, but it is still not easy for a relative beginner to tell the difference between a double die error coin or a coin showing machine doubling, for example.
Beside the errors and varieties forum, there are a number of other forums including forums on peace and morgan dollars as well as world coins and ancient coins.
Below is a small sample of the forums and topics you will find on the site.
While you will find a lot of topics and good information on the site, there is not much on Spanish colonial coins. There is an article by Augie Garcia of Sedwick Auctions, but not much else that I've found.
I found the forums most useful for learning about US coin errors and varieties, and posted some of my own suspected error coins for comments by the readers and experts on the site and found it very helpful. Check it out.
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I don't know where the readers come from, but the old treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com site gets thousands of readers daily and that periodically swells to tens of thousands. I don't know where the readers come from and I don't know why there are waves like that. It seems like maybe monthly there will be a wave that gradually grows, peaks and then decreases until the next wave starts. If my blogs were a money-making venture and I did the analytics I'd know what drove readership, but I as it is, I don't have the slightest idea of where people hear about my blogs.
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| Source: nhc.noaa.gov |
Ernesto is far away from us now, but we were still getting some swell action from the storm.
Other than Ernesto, there is nothing else to notice on the NHC map. Surprising that there are no other signs of development.
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| Source: SurfGuru.com. |
We are getting some good high tides this week.
Good hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net.