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Warning: I used to wipe down every shelf in my coin case with a dry rag, now I use a $4 pencil eraser and a cotton glove
I have been keeping copper cents in 2x2 flips since 2019 and for the first 4 years I cleaned the cardboard holders and the case with a dry microfiber rag every month. A guy at the coin show in Dayton last month watched me do it and told me I was basically rubbing dust into the coins and that the paper flips were leaching stuff onto the rims. Now I pull each flip, rub the cardboard seam with a white vinyl eraser, wipe with a clean cotton glove finger, and store the whole case in a sealed bin with 2 silica packs. My 1943 steel cents stopped getting that gray haze on the edges after about 6 weeks. The dry rag was the problem the whole time and I never would have guessed it. Does anyone know if the eraser trick hurts the paper long term, or should I switch to something else?
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hernandez.jordan13d ago
Honestly the dry rag thing sounds like a coin show tall tale to me. Every dealer I know has wiped down cardboard flips with a plain cloth for decades and their copper still looks fine, so blaming the rag for haze on steel cents seems like a stretch when humidity and the plastic in the bin are way bigger factors. And rubbing an eraser on the cardboard seam? That stuff sheds tiny bits of rubber and grit, and you're pushing it right toward the coin opening, which is way worse than a soft rag ever was. Those steel cents probably cleared up because you sealed the bin and tossed in silica, not because of the eraser at all.
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