How to Clean Gold Coins

Collecting gold coins is a popular hobby and business for many people but beside of accumulating bright and shiny rounds, it's very important to know how to clean gold coins.

The rule of thumb – avoid cleaning gold coins wherever you can. The same applies to all coins, whether they made of precious metals or not and whether they're ancient, old, or new coins. The shininess and brightness of the coin is often not adding to the value of a coin.

There're two main reasons for this: first, you can damage the coin while cleaning it if you're doing it too vigorously or using inappropriate (abrasive) cleaning materials. Second, all coins develop a fine film on their surface over the years, which is called "patina", which is valued by most collectors and by cleaning your gold coins you're literally just rubbing off dollars from the value of your coin.

Nevertheless, if you still want to clean your gold coin if it's too dirty or grubby, you need to know how to clean gold coins properly and with the least possible damage to them. First, you can wash it in warm water with soap. If the dirt doesn't come off, you can try boiling your coins in soapy water, but don’t steam off all water, or you will ruin it.

If you need to remove stains, you can use solvents, such as acetone or nail varnish remover. It depends on the nature of the stains of course, but most organic spotting can be cleaned – you may want to wash your coin after using solvent, as it may get sticky and can get damaged or even develop more unpleasant spotting after a while.

And the last piece of advice for how to clean gold coins, if you came over a soiled gold coin and you're not sure about its value, please see you local coin dealer first. You don't have to sell it to him right away before you check its value from some other sources, but he or she will definitely advice you whether it's worth cleaning it or not.

You can see current listings for Gold Coins here.