How To Clean Your Coins

 As I said (or wrote) in my first post, do not wash your coins, that will destroy it's value (especially old coins). As the coin gets older, a brown substance will grow onto the coin to protect them, older collectors look out for coins with those substances on, but if you are targeting a younger and more inexperienced audience to sell/trade your coins with, you can clean the coins.

So if you want to clean your coins, this is what you can do. 

Mostly, coin cleaning needs acidic substances (like ketchup), but before that, you should use something that is more neutral and less damaging to your coins.

1. Step one: hold your coin around the edge and hold it under a tape
2. Step two: turn on the cold water and blast (not to much) on the surface of the coin for 30-60 seconds (do not rub the coin)
3. Step three: repeat 'step two' on the other side of the coin (use a small, soft brush if you need to)

If you think your coin is okay now, you can put it on a tissue to dry. However, if you think the coin needs to be cleaned more, then follow these steps below (careful, the acidic substances may harm your coins)

1. Step one: get yourself some acid!!! Here is a few that you can use :Vinegar, Ketchup and Orange/ apple juice 
2. Step two: put your selected acid in a small bowl and gently drop your coin(s) in.
3. Step three: leave it for 20 minutes to a day (don't leave it in for too long)
4. Step four: make sure you do this or else your coin will look like Statue of Liberty. Blast hot water over both sides of your coin to remove any acidic substances (make sure you get the edges as well) 
5. Step five: Leave it to dry

When it dries, you will (hopefully) get a shiny coin.

Getting Started on Your Collecting

Hello, I am Pudding, this is my very first blog. Anyway, I am a coin collector for nearly four years, so I thought maybe I could share my experiences, warnings and tips.

Start Coin Collecting

If you are interested in to start coin collecting (and for goodness sake, don't just start collecting because you want to get rich) , there are a few ways to get started:

• Picking coins out of the circulation

This is perhaps the most common way to collect coin and the cheapest option for new coin collectors. Just because you are picking coins out of the circulation doesn't mean that you won't get rare coins, nowadays many precious coins are mixed inside them.

• Buying online

If you want to speed up your collecting or if you want to collect old/ oversea coins by just sitting on your sofa doing nothing much, then this is the best option for if you have a lot of money on your hands. There are many online auction and buying sites (like EBay, Amazon), and there are sites that are less well known. Be careful especially on the less well known sites, because they might never arrive or be fakes for all you know; if something is too good to be true, it might be really be too good to be true. If you are a beginner, the cheapest coins on sell are the oversea coin, mainly because there are less demands for them and they could be quite rare, but make sure you do plenty of researches before you buy them.

• Buying/ trading from collectors

This is perhaps my favourite ways of collecting and I would recommend this if you are buying/trading for a more expensive coin, this way you can check whether the coin is real or fake and it's conditions. Also by exchanging coins with collectors face to face, you can share your experiences with them, it's a great way to socialise (if you want to of course) and to learn. If you like this option,  you can join some coin collector's club/ group or even create your own. Same thing again, do a lot of research before hand to avoid being tricked.


Somethings you might want to know

• Guidelines on the value and prices of coins you see are not accurate as it may seem, the market prices changes due to the more and less demand of the coin. 
• Do not wash your coins, that will destroy it's value (especially old coins). As the coin gets older, a brown substance will grow onto the coin to protect them, older collectors look out for coins with those substances on, but if you are targeting a younger and more inexperienced audience to sell/trade your coins with, you can clean the coins. http://coin101.blogspot.com/2015/01/how-to-clean-your-coins-as-i-said-or.html
• Always hold your coins by their edge, the oil on your finger might damage the face of the coins or you may accidentally scratch them(specially gold coins)
• Some coins are called 'error' coins, they are coins that have being wrongly minted. If you are collecting that kind of coin then you would want to check for them in the coins circulation. There are two types of error coins, one is mass error coins (when there are a batch of the coins of the same error) or single error coins (when there are only one out of a batch)

• And of course, always have fun!