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I've been hand sorting for about 2 years now and have a question for you veterans. I've heard about "green cancer," "green gunk," "green..." What is that? Obviously, I've encountered some nasty pennies, but is there anything I need to worry about for my "hoard?" Does it effect only coppers, only zincs or everything? I've got my coppers, but I also have a couple tubs of zincolns that I've had for a while- should I worry about those? I'd apprecaite any information.

If it's not verdigris, then I don't know what it is. That problem is discussed on realcent from time to time.

They say that in time it can spread to other coins. Particularly if they are in a damp environment.
Some guys keep them as ugly abes - I throw mine back in with the zincolns. I'm a hand sorter so
I don't how the guys with sorters handle it.

Some more discussion on this, and maybe with pictures, would be helpful. I've personally observed what I think are three main types of ugly ables. And I'm color blind (partially), so excuse my description, which is likely not fully accurate.

One type clearly looks like regular corrosion: a dark greenish-black which has ragged edges and a rough feel to it.

A second type may be a different type of corrosion, but looks and feels more like mildew (and I see more of this, here). It is a light milky green, slightly translucent. and has a bit of a slimey feel to it.

I also see a lot of a third type, which is simply a dark colored cent, oftentimes feeling a bit sticky. I've been less certain that this is corrosion versus perhaps something that had been pulled out of a crevice from soft drink crud.

68Camaro wrote:Some more discussion on this, and maybe with pictures, would be helpful. I've personally observed what I think are three main types of ugly ables. And I'm color blind (partially), so excuse my description, which is likely not fully accurate.

One type clearly looks like regular corrosion: a dark greenish-black which has ragged edges and a rough feel to it.

A second type may be a different type of corrosion, but looks and feels more like mildew (and I see more of this, here). It is a light milky green, slightly translucent. and has a bit of a slimey feel to it.

I also see a lot of a third type, which is simply a dark colored cent, oftentimes feeling a bit sticky. I've been less certain that this is corrosion versus perhaps something that had been pulled out of a crevice from soft drink crud.

There is another sub-category, and I'm not sure what causes this. I always assumed they had gone thru sewage process or something, and then been recovered. These coins are brighter than their yearmates, pinkish to orangish in coloration, but pitted microscopically as if they had been acid-etched.

I'm finding more coins lately with the milky, mildewy covering like 68 described.

Almost every bag will have about a roll of cents that look like they've been in a fire.
Blackened, pitted, some kind of corrosion that won't rub off.

I used to tumble my greens before I added them to the batch so they were clean. Now I am thinking about just throwing them back as I bet I spend more time and money on cleaning them then they will ever be worth. But I do keep the green wheats.

So you've washed them? I was thinking throw some in with the regular wash, and figure they will stay on the bottom, but I'm also thinking it won't completely take the green off.

For me, anything with the slightest amount of green on it goes into a large plastic bottle. Once the plastic bottle is about 1/4-1/3 full (~5lbs), I give them a good wash with dish detergent to remove any oil or loose dirt. After that, I rinse them well, and then give them a good long soak in a mixture of diluted Kaboom. They come out unnaturally pink, but they don't have anything left on them that might further corrode them or cause others to corrode when coming into contact with them.

I’m a hand sorter, so it usually takes me about a month to get enough to go through the above process. It also helps me sleep at night knowing I’ve captured a few extra coppers from the wild, and helped them repent of their corrosive ways. Just have to make sure no zincs sneak in (last time, I had a zinc that snuck in, and it ended up turning a lot of the pennies black during the above process).

beauanderos wrote:

68Camaro wrote:Some more discussion on this, and maybe with pictures, would be helpful. I've personally observed what I think are three main types of ugly ables. And I'm color blind (partially), so excuse my description, which is likely not fully accurate.

One type clearly looks like regular corrosion: a dark greenish-black which has ragged edges and a rough feel to it.

A second type may be a different type of corrosion, but looks and feels more like mildew (and I see more of this, here). It is a light milky green, slightly translucent. and has a bit of a slimey feel to it.

I also see a lot of a third type, which is simply a dark colored cent, oftentimes feeling a bit sticky. I've been less certain that this is corrosion versus perhaps something that had been pulled out of a crevice from soft drink crud.

There is another sub-category, and I'm not sure what causes this. I always assumed they had gone thru sewage process or something, and then been recovered. These coins are brighter than their yearmates, pinkish to orangish in coloration, but pitted microscopically as if they had been acid-etched.

Agree, I see these as well, though in a smaller number. They look as though they've been acid-cleaned. As though from swimming pool water (chlorine/muriatic acid). In fact when I was (for a short time) trying to clean ugly abes in a vinegar (acetic acid)/salt mixture, they would sometimes come out like that.

DirtyFingers wrote:I'm finding more coins lately with the milky, mildewy covering like 68 described.

Almost every bag will have about a roll of cents that look like they've been in a fire.
Blackened, pitted, some kind of corrosion that won't rub off.

I agree. It seems like I've been finding more and more junky, corroded, sticky, and/or green and black pennies all the time. It's getting annoying.

Should I start storing "ugly Abes" seperately from my "beautiful Abes?" And does anyone know if it effects zinc or just copper? (I actually have a very small zinc hoard I'm saving for a vacation)

I take care of "green cancer" with a tumbler and VERY LITTLE clear dish soap. Just a drop or two. Tumble for a hour or two. Rinse well and air dry. Do this only with coins that you know have no numismatic value.

I have been putting all my dirty, funky, and green cents aside. Once the bin is full I will borrow my sisters rock tumbler and clean them up. I am too much of a penny pincher to send them back into the wild!

Hawkeye wrote:Should I start storing "ugly Abes" seperately from my "beautiful Abes?" And does anyone know if it effects zinc or just copper? (I actually have a very small zinc hoard I'm saving for a vacation)

Hawkeye, I've always kept my "uglies" seperate from the "clean" abes.

If nothing else, just for peace of mind. Besides, let's say a collector is interested in buying part of all of my hoard, mixing
in the "uglies" might make it a tough sell. But when the melt ban lifts and you decide to sell to a scrapyard, it probably wouldn't matter if they were mixed. I'm keeping mine seperate so I'll have several options.

Not sure about zincs.

With all this discussion about the green cents I was planning on running them through my other brass tumbler with corn cob media. I do not have enough of them yet. Only about one pound so far. Works good to clean yellow brass so I suspect it will do good with red brass.

MUTiger

I pull coins with any green on them, no matter what the shade. When I've sorted uncleaned coins, then left them alone for a few weeks, I've seen bright green in a mass on several adjacent coins, so I presume that it's spread from one coin to the others. I don't know if that's verdigris or some kind of super bacteria, but it's nasty-looking stuff.

I tried washing all my coins before sorting them. Man, did THAT work sweet--the Ryedale never ran so smoothly. Problem is, I don't have the setup to wash them on a large enough scale to continue that practice. Now I just wash the coppers from my first dual-sort before running them through the final-sort Ryedale.

From what I've been able to glean from the intertubes, an acetone soak will kill the verdigris and keep it from spreading. And you want to rinse washed coins in distilled water--the chlorine in tap water invites corrosion. I had a terrible time drying coins until I invested in a jewelry tumbler. When air-dried, they had a really ugly finish. When tumble-dried, they actually have a pleasant sheen.

I just hand sorted $15 worth and they were about the ugliest batch I'd ever gone through. Each roll had around 10 +/-, ugly cents with a colorful mix of verdigris, gunk, and white mildew looking crud on the zincs and coppers. There were so many of these ugly pennies with whitish, funky corrosion that it looked like somebody poured paint on a large pile of coins. Copper is copper, but I doubt a buyer would want to get this junk.

I just tried pure cranberry juice, no sweetener in it, it works good but leaves a scar of grime left over. On some, it loosens but you have to like hit it with a rag if you want a cleaner penny sometimes, but some are just really dirty. I'll still have to see how long the second batch goes, I'm going to give it 24 hours. I only went about 6 hours soaking for the first batch. Some of the really bad green stuff, the lighter green seems to not always come off, but the first batch still seemed to get most of it. The cranberry juice does not seem to take off the surface of the coin like ketchup does.

galenrog wrote:I take care of "green cancer" with a tumbler and VERY LITTLE clear dish soap. Just a drop or two. Tumble for a hour or two. Rinse well and air dry. Do this only with coins that you know have no numismatic value.

I use the same Process

Rosco wrote:

galenrog wrote:I take care of "green cancer" with a tumbler and VERY LITTLE clear dish soap. Just a drop or two. Tumble for a hour or two. Rinse well and air dry. Do this only with coins that you know have no numismatic value.

I use the same Process

Can one of you post some before and after photos, please? I would like to see how this works. I've been increasingly aware of the corrosion and getting to the point where I'm pulling a LOT of pennies to the side, even if I see just a little bit of questionable area. I'm getting maybe a bit too anal about this, to the point where my yield is going to be dropping if I don't recover the pennies I'm pulling via some easy-to-use cleaning process like what you describe. The other processes I've tried (like salt/vinegar) don't seem to work well enough, and still require a lot of work. I would like to be able to save these up and then run them in batches on a sunny day when I've got other things going on, and when done I can just rinse them and put them in the sun to dry before bagging them separately as a cleaned run.

you guys are sounding like a bunch of women.

Bla bla blah, ... yeah, so what

Treetop wrote:you guys are sounding like a bunch of women.

+1

Wow, they look great! How much effort is involved? What tumbler do you use?