Don't you sometimes wish you could edit the internet?

Looking at sites on coin preservation I came across this monstrosity that gives step by step guides to cleaning coins (including one delightful article on using a rock tumbler, and one about taking to them with a blowtorch to straighten them out) and then which chemicals to use to give coins different coloured artificial patinas.

http://metaldetectingworld.com/cleaning_preservation_coin.shtml

It sounds scary, but I have dug up tons of really ugly coins and in that state, all you want to do is clean them off so you can spend them. As for the bent coin - I wouldn't unbend a bent hammered coin (they were often bent so that they could be hooked onto a string and carried around securely, fairly interesting) but many of these coins ARE manhandled and broken by the uninitiated. Heating the metal will at least let you unbend the coin properly.

The site is aimed at metal detectorists, but he states that the information can be used by anyone who collects coins, medals or tokens.  A lot of his cleaning methods seem harsh, using acid, bashing groups of coins with a wooden mallet to break them up, using a blow torch to un-bend coins, using a rock tumbler to clean encrusted coins.

While I would use this method on metal-detecting coins (if I wanted to put them back into circulation), I can't IMAGINE using anything like this on coins I wanted to keep! The furthest I've ever gone has been a wet tissue (several, actually) on an obscenely dirt-laden silver piece that also happened to be bent. I will NOT unbend it, but the water helped get enough of the grossness off that I can at least better see the coin's details and pictures. However, I'd never touch it with anything but water - I hate artificially cleaned coins.

Besides, obviously something happened to it to make it this dirty - the real question is, what? This coin is also interesting in that it has over half a dozen small stab-like dents on George VI's face... I wonder what ol' Georgie did to deserve stabbings . It clearly has a story behind it, at any rate; there's "scope for imagination" in it, as Anne of Green Gables would say.