This week’s tip of the week touches on the subject of how to handle coins. While many long time coin collectors may be familiar with the proper way of handling coins, it isn’t necessarily intuitive, so we thought we would provide you with a few do’s and dont’s in an effort to help you to properly preserve your coins.
1. Don’t touch the face or reverse side of your coins with your bare hands. Moisture and oils from your hands can affect the original mint luster of your coin, and cause tarnishing, which can reduce the value of your coins.
2. Don’t clean your coins under any circumstances. While intuitively we all want nice clean shiny coins, cleaning them dramatically reduces the value, and many times, completely eliminates any collectible or numismatic value that the coins might have.
3. Do invest in a quality pair of cotton gloves and wear them whenever handling coins. Even when wearing cotton gloves, don’t touch the face or reverse side of your coin. The mint luster can still be altered even when wearing cotton gloves. The proper way to pick up a coin is by the edges.
We hope that you found this week’s tip of the week on how to handle your coins helpful. We welcome you to sign up on the homepage of our website to receive future editions of our tip of the week feature via e-mail.
