Restored Token?

Hi guys,

It's been a while since I've posted and I've found some great things recently and hope to post them soon. Anyways, I found this token last week and having others like it decided to try my hand at restoring it. I was going for a two tone look, since it is so difficult to see details on oxidized brass tokens you find in the ground. I used a dremel tool with a cotton buffing end and baking soda and water to flatten the background. The high points were lightly sanded with a 300 grit sanding block. Let me know what you honestly think and whether I've hurt the value of the token or not?

Before:
Attachment 49926
Attachment 49927
After:
Attachment 49928
Attachment 49929
Thanks for looking!

Cleaning probably devalued it but it looks pretty good.

I like the clean-up job. Bottom line is what you think of it. Saw similar tokens selling for around $15 so regardless of whether you increased or decreased the value it's a neat relic. Congrats.

John

By comparison, you can see where you sanded off much of the detail and raised areas of the token, so definitely devalued if it had any value to begin with. If you wand to get rid of oxidation on brass such as this token and want to keep all the detail there are chemical brass cleaners that will remove the oxidation with little or no rubbing. But mind, that also will likely devalue the token in most cases because I think almost any serious collector will be looking for that patina showing it's age.

Hope this helps

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Digger_O'Dell

By comparison, you can see where you sanded off much of the detail and raised areas of the token, so definitely devalued if it had any value to begin with. If you wand to get rid of oxidation on brass such as this token and want to keep all the detail there are chemical brass cleaners that will remove the oxidation with little or no rubbing. But mind, that also will likely devalue the token in most cases because I think almost any serious collector will be looking for that patina showing it's age.

Hope this helps

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Yeah I figured I probably hurt the value a little bit and wouldn't have messed with it if I didn't have multiples of it. I find the chemical cleaners often show pitting after removing the oxidation and make the details even harder to discern. Bottom line it's almost impossible to clean brass and coppers without making them worse in some way.

I personally like the "new" look although i might have tried something a bit less rough on the high spots , maybe some 600 or 1000 grit next time but i'll give you an A for the nice results . great job !!

Value wise almost anything you try to do to a coin or token is going to devalue it . You did do a nice job on it and I do think it looks better . I think your pretty handy with that Dremel , had you ever considered a
career in Dentistry ?

I don't care about selling my tokens so I clean them how I want. When I am dead who cares what I did to them

I'd agree with all what was said. It does look good, and good effort done in cleaning but some of the detail on the high spots got removed with too high grit. I'm sure you did this as a trial an error on the item worth the least.