It has a light blue coating on it. Should I polish it. It isn’t thin. Well built.
Not if you care about retaining the resale value. I’m not a expert but know that such actions on old stuff can kill the value of the piece. Better to leave it as is, or seek a expert.
If you don’t care about it’s monetary value, they yes go ahead.
I’ve always heard that cleaning a old item is a bad idea. I’d ask a pro.
But not in ATMB. Reported for forum change for you.
What he said. Polishing old collectible stuff is a recipe for disaster for most things. Don’t do it and ask an expert.
My parents were antique dealers specializing in stuff like old English silver. Be very careful.
NO. Do not, I repeat, do NOT polish it. I’m guessing that “light blue coating” you’re referring to would be a patina, which is actually desirable. If you want to see how to take care of it take it to an antiques expert.
But in the mean time, I just in case I didn’t mention it – DO NOT ATTEMPT TO POLISH/CLEAN IT!!!
What** Guinastasia** said. You clean/polish it, you ruin the value.
Semi-retired pro ---- DO NOT clean it. Anything that changes the appearance will also destroy a lot of the value. Cleaning/conservation is best left to the professionals with anything in better than relic (totally crapped up in layman terms) and even then I would think at least four times more than the standard twice before suggesting you try it. I’ve seen too many nice pieces destroyed to think your results would be good.
I have heard that the only antiques that should be cleaned/polished are those made of silver or brass. Anything else leave it be if you want to maintain any kind of value. For an almost 2000 yr old object I would talk to an expert before trying anything more than a damp cloth to remove dust.
OK, I’ll be THAT guy…
It depends. What do you want to do with it? If it’s an investment and you want to get your money back out of it, then no.
If you just want to display it or show it off, why not? I’ve got quite a few 19th century silver coins on display. They’re not worth a lot of money, but I cleaned them before putting them in a case(s). (I had a professional do it. Even he asked me if I was sure I wanted to do it.) It’s your bracelet, after all. Heck, you could wear it if you wanted to. An awful lot of people wear more money on their wrists than your bracelet is worth, I’m sure.
This is not just a 100-year old coin, but a bracelet that’s over a thousand years old. Even if he doesn’t want to sell it, it’s still a bad idea to attempt to clean something like this yourself. If he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he could end up ruining the bracelet entirely.
Get a pro to do it.
Yes, I agree about having a pro do it. I mentioned that I didn’t clean my own silver coins. I didn’t expect that the OP would take a steel wool soap pad to the bracelet.
What I meant was that museums have old paintings cleaned, antique furniture is often refinished, and people regularly clean old jewelry to display or wear. There’s nothing inherently virtuous in not cleaning an old (or ancient) item that you own, if you’d rather have it clean. I’d rather lose a $100 in value on an old silver dollar and be able to show off the detail than squirrel it away as an investment because it sat inside someone’s sweat-stained socks for 125 years.
Now, if the OP had said that it was St. Augustine’s great-great-great-grandfather’s medic alert bracelet…
It’s not just about the money, though – it could actually ruin the bracelet entirely, if you don’t know what you’re doing. Any detail, or whatever, might be lost, it could be scratched or damaged, etc.
It’s not worth the risk – again, this bracelet is from 200 CE. That’s over 1000 years old.
I appreciate the basic Don’t Stress sentiment, but that’s bad guidance here. Get it looked at by a pro and have its value assessed before you do anything. And err on the side of doing nothing, aggressively.
Even there it can come down to a lot of variables especially if it is something you may want to sell in the future. Something like flatware or say candlesticks and maybe cleaning is fine but even then it can vary. A lady had a pair of sterling candlesticks that had toned a beautiful rainbow hue naturally that you couldn’t fake in a hundred tries. Cleaned they would have been meh at best and probably just melted; as they sat I got her a really nice price and myself a nice profit. Another example that springs to mind is a 1850s caplock rifle. The owner got quoted a price and felt it was a little low so he took it home and Brasso’d all the brass (buttplate, trigger guard, etc.) and got rid of all that nasty green around the edges and made it shine. The final price he got was maybe 40% of what he was originally quoted.
Now if its something you want for personal use or reasons all bets are off. Then it becomes “whatever you want”. I have these large decorative metal/copper plates over the fireplaces in my house. Something like
I knew/know cleaning them was a mistake and I know I took away a lot of the value. But screw it; its my house and I’m the one looking at them every day. So my heirs can worry about the rest and I give them a light shine every couple years or so. Very gently and again I was trained but ---------- FWIW there it is.
I’m imagining the 2,000 - 5,000 year-old ghosts of jewelry craftsmen wandering the world. They peek in on museums and large private collections for a taste of nostalgia, reliving the good old days. Occasionally, one chances upon one of his own works on display, relatively intact but filthy and oxidized, looking nothing like the beautiful item he’d put so many hours and all of his skill into crafting from a lump of metal and rough stones. How sad that, for the sake of “value”, the world is deprived of witnessing the product of his passion.
Clean it. Or rather, have a pro clean it. It wasn’t created to record the history it endured by chance. It was created to be beautiful.
If he wants to clean it, fine – just don’t attempt a DIY job on something that old. Not necessarily because you want to destroy the value, but because you could fuck it up if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Better get a pro to do it and have a decent job. (BTW, do you have a picture of the bracelet? That could help to see what kind of “blue film” you’re talking about)
Just toss it in the dishwasher and see what happens.
What?
Sound Advice!
That said is there anything that someone can do if they actually want to wear this against their skin like this bracelet? In addition to retaining the value, the patina will likely give the wearer that lovely green stripe around the wrist.
I assume any kind of clear coating will also destroyed the value correct?
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Can we see it? It sounds really cool.
Am I the only person curious about the provenance of this object? Where did you get it? How do you know how old it is? Any old stories that you can tie to it?