Coins - British and World
Coin advice, information and valuations.
[ Home
:|: Coins For Sale :|:
Collecting Accessories :|:
Book Shop ]
[
Selling your Coins
:|: Coin discussion Forum
:|: Affiliate area ]
If
you've landed on this page, you may have followed an old link!
Click
here to visit the new improved predecimal.com.
| Call Predecimal: 0871 871 5122 From outside the UK, use: |
|
| Advice
Hub Coin grading, general coin care and information. |
| Coin Forum Discuss anything else coin related. Post pictures, setup a poll, get a valuation. It's feature packed. |
| Special
Offers Sets of old pennies and other reduced items for quick sale. |
| Online Auctions Coin and collecting accessory auctions. |
| Roman coin mission Lessons learned when I started being fascinated by Roman Coins. |
| Links Coin and other collecting links. Including stamps and bank notes. |
| British
Coins The complete History of British coinage from Celtic to now. In 12 parts. |
| Strange coinage system! Predecimal? What's that? Read all about Great Britain and Northern Ireland coin denominations before 1971. |
Cleaning Coins:
Quite simply, do not clean coins, it should be outlawed! Although, obviously if you have a coin that is caked in muck, get rid of the muck as best you can, by hand or by running it under a tap. Roman coins and other coins that have been in the earth for a long time will need specialist cleaning but you should only consider this if you have learnt the correct techniques (see the links on my Roman page).
Never use abrasives or chemicals and NEVER polish coins. Polishing is the worst thing you can do. Of course it makes them look superficially nice but you'll find that you've just completely destroyed any value they may of had.
Collectors always shy away from polished coins preferring coins that are in good original condition. Especially with silver coins, I have found collectors usually prefer the dark, sometimes black tarnish to the bright 'Look at me I've been cleaned beautifully' coin.
It's all about our concept of how 'age' should look. A coin that is 200 years old and in good condition should still look 200 years old. If it doesn't look new, It'll never look new whatever you do to it. That is its secret and also a good degree of its charm.
Has this been useful? If so, please put a comment in the Forum
Purchase Software designed to help catalogue and manage your British Coins.
Chris Perkins. 28th May 2001
Click here to go back to the Homepage
Useful Info Links:
Advice Hub. Links to all advice texts.
Gold, Silver and popular valuation requests - information on current silver and gold market values and some notes about popular valuation requests.
Grading guide - Grading British and World coins including grading chart from 11 different countries.
Denomination guide - Predecimal monetary system info.
Identification guide - Diameters and metal types of British coins to help identification.
Coin images - Nearly 600 pictures of most British coins from the last 100 years+.
Key Dates - An Important reference list of all the British key date coins 1821 - 1970. Great to help you when you find the time to sort through your accumulation!
Got a question? - Need personal advice FOC. You are welcome to email.
Still got a question? - If I can't answer your question, maybe one of the 10000+ people that visit this site every month can. Why not ask a question in the forum? You may even find it has already been answered!