Found my dad’s coin collection, some are really cool,, a misprinted penny even.
There’s some in there that I can’t make out but I don’t want to ruin them either.
One is dated 18?????

Could definitely use some help.

Olive oil , don’t do Electrolysis for coins

Dont clean them at all. Wet them with light oil or water if you want to make it easier to read. Them dry of the oil or water without scrubbing it. Dab the oil or water off with a dry clean rag

Turtledale as he stated ^^^^^!!!!!!!

Brasso

I would not clean them either

Anyone with 1/2 a Brain...knows, you don't clean old coins

But yet guys take the wire wheel to an old Newhouse they find.

Do this if you want to devalue a rare coin to a fraction of its current dirty value.

Thanks guys,,, I don’t know a whole lot about coins,,, so I don’t want to mess any of them up… just curious to see how old some of them are.
One I clearly was able to read was 1864 on one of them.
There was also some silver spoons in there too.

Some coins were probably not worth much, from Korea, Germany, Greece ( I think) Panama with dates from the different years from the 50s/60s.. but pretty darn cool to look at.
The ones I think are from Greece has some guys image on there that look like Alfred Hitchcock a bit.

Go ahead and clean them if you want them to lose collector value.
Oops, just noticed I'm piling on... oh well, I'll click Post anyway.

Never clean an antique. Its like baseball cards. The value is in the orig condition.

CoinSnap is a free to inexpensive app ( depending on how much you want to know) that will give you an estimate on what each coin is worth. Also will
Let you catalog your coins and give a total value for your collection. You might be surprised what the foreign coins are worth. A lot of fun but addictive. Often will read coins that I couldn’t see dates on with a magnifying glass

If they are silver use asatone and Q tip reinse in water pat dry with soft rag. It will not damage them. If they are copper or nickel leave them as they are.

Lots of good advice here. NEVER CLEAN COINS. Remember your basic chemistry.

Clean the coins. Don’t let these antique roadshow enthusiasts scare you. Coin dealers clean them all the time and that’s how you maximize value. There is one caveat, don’t take coin cleaning advice from a trapping forum. There has to be a thousand web sites dedicated to old coin collecting…I would start there.

Valuable old coins in good condition have a layer on them which comes from the minting dies. If you remove that be cleaning them and have them graded, they will come back as "cleaned" which greatly lowers their value.
They are your coins. Do whatever you want with them, just know that it can have a huge impact on their value when your grandkids go to sell them.

…. Best way is to swallow them and collect when they pass … your natural gastric acids will effectively remove the patina … just rinse in Luke warm tap water after retrieving and the date should be legible