Hello there i was wondering if there is any safe way to remove stains from old banknotes that doesn't do any damage to the rest of it. I know that cleaning is a huge no no for coins and banknotes alike. But these stains kind of bothers me. Also i would not say this notes are in the best of condition as well.
There is no safe way to remove stains from any banknote (old or new). With the new polymer notes you can remove some glue-like residues &/or use water to clean them (of light soil) but even this will show (ultimately) to where you've been scratching/washing/removing whatever it is off. On close inspection cleaning will become visible. For paper, the results are worse. Usually one sacrifices the microprint (background colours) which become blotchy after a clean or scrub. Notes often shrink after being wet too. It just doesn't pay to even try (at least in my books). Others may disagree but I don't really care what others think (when it comes to washing/processing) a note. I've taken flack on other forums for recommending not flattening out folds too.
You're better off to keep the note "as is."
Stains/soiling annoys a lot of collectors (unless they're circulation only collectors) & that's why they're usually passed on in the market place (are sold with deep discounts). They're not a bargain. Most notes with stains (oil & ingrained soiling) lack eye appeal & they're just not sought after unless quite rare. And I don't mean "eBay rare" but truly scarce & tough to get (in any condition). All the nice features of a note diminish with circulation. Thus, 'eye appeal' often diminishes as a note's colour/crispness fades (with circulation). That's why the price of UNC (Book Value) is what it is & why UNC notes appreciate almost exponentially while VF (& less) hardly ever increase on a year to year bases.
Cleaning a note damages it and reduces its grade.
Many collectors, myself included, do not like cleaned notes and won't buy them. I prefer a vg grade 'honest' note to a cleaned EF.
ShaNumisHello there i was wondering if there is any safe way to remove stains from old banknotes that doesn't do any damage to the rest of it. I know that cleaning is a huge no no for coins and banknotes alike. But these stains kind of bothers me. Also i would not say this notes are in the best of condition as well.
I do not blame you. The $5 for the orchard is my favourite for this first Singapore series. The other ones are $50 and $100. If only I had a deep pocket in those days. I do agree with the comments here not to clean them. I also have the $1 Malaya note too, and mine was stored in a rusty tin can for many years and also have rust spots. The high humidity environment in Singapore is not helping you to prevent these kinds of damages to paper banknotes. Good luck to you.
Any solution on a paper banknote will run the inks. I got an old Hugarian note once with some tape marks on it. I tried some alcohol on it and all the colours ran. It was an experiment and the bill cost me less than $1. Haven't done it since and I have some bad ones. There is a natural foxing that occurs to paper like how old newspaper turns yellow.
I like to look at the stains and dirt and make up stories about where the banknote has actually been. Where and who had this note to make the marks and stains on them. It gives them history.
I have some Italian notes with a similar brown coffee stains on them. I got them from a friend whose father had immigrated to Canada after WW II. Because I know the provenance it makes those notes a little special. Can you image a young man coming to a new country to start over with only a little money to get by? Those notes have a story to tell.
you have answered your own question. If you are close to a museum go ask a curator or restorer what they do to restore paper and try their technique. Otherwise experiment yourself and tell us what results you get.
One of the issues with bleaching paper is that it damages the structure of the paper, permanently.
The paper will fall apart eventually + they stink like dirty bleach + they can actually ruin other notes which come into contact with them. All the notes that have been cleaned, look cleaned. Any TPG note which has no “EPQ” but looks great could actually have been cleaned (& likely pressed at the very least). Pressing is no big deal but the shadow of a possible clean-job discounts non-EPQ notes severely.
There's really no upside to these threads (& beating a dead horse over an unsavoury practice). It almost always leads to good old (collectible) banknotes being processed (by others searching for threads like this) & then the processed note being put up for sale at a big profit (b/c it involves money).
