When I was twelve, my grandfather handed me a coffee can of wheat pennies and old nickels and gave me the only rule he cared about. Keep your fingers off the faces. It took me thirty years to understand how right he was. Copper, silver and nickel all take on what your skin leaves behind, and once a print etches into a surface it does not come back out with a soft cloth. I am sixty seven now and I keep a box of cotton gloves on the shelf above my desk in the coin room, and I put a pair on for anything that is not already worn smooth from circulation.
The gloves I use are Zealor cotton gloves, twelve pairs to a box, twenty four pieces in all. They are plain, they are lightweight, and they do the one job I need, which is to keep my hands from being the last thing a coin touches before it goes back in the flip. I am not going to tell you a glove will make a coin more valuable, because it will not. What it does is keep you from making a coin worse than it already is, which is a different and more useful thing.
Put a clean pair of gloves between your skin and the coin
Twelve pairs of Zealor cotton gloves, 24 pieces, lightweight and washable, sized large at 9.2 inches long. One box covers a whole season at the desk.
Amazon Check Today's Price on Amazon →Skin oil dulls a surface faster than plain air does
Your fingertips carry skin oil, a little salt and whatever you had for lunch. On a copper cent that shows up as a dull patch within a day or two, and on a silver dollar it shows as a haze that photographs badly. The fix is not a better cloth and it is not a longer wipe. The fix is never letting the oil land in the first place. A glove is the barrier, and it needs to go on before you open the flip, not after you have already had a look.
It stops the thumb rub you do without thinking
Pick up a coin barehanded and your thumb finds the face and gives it a small wipe. Everybody does it. I still catch myself at sixty seven. That wipe is the most common way a decent coin becomes a less decent coin, because whatever grit is on your thumb gets dragged across the field. Cotton does not drag the same way a bare thumb does, and after a few weeks the habit fades, because a gloved finger does not feel like something that ought to be rubbing a coin in the first place.
Twelve pairs mean a clean pair is always within reach
I like the twelve pair box for one reason. I never have an excuse. When a pair gets grubby after an hour with a roll of circulated cents, it goes into the mesh bag and a fresh pair comes out of the box. With only one pair I would keep wearing the dirty one out of plain laziness, and a glove that is carrying grit is worse than a bare hand on the day it matters.
Cotton breathes, so your hands stay dry
Nitrile has its place and I use it for a few jobs around the house. But an hour inside a glove that does not breathe, in a Toledo summer, leaves your hand damp, and a damp hand will put moisture on whatever it touches. The Zealor gloves are cotton and polyester and they are lightweight. Air moves through them. I can wear a pair through a whole sorting session and my hands do not feel like they have been shut in a plastic bag.
The 9.2 inch length covers past the wrist
They measure 9.2 inches long and 3.4 inches wide, and on my hands that comes down past the wrist. That sounds like a small thing until you reach across the felt pad toward the plastic tray and the underside of your forearm brushes a coin sitting near the edge. A glove that quits at the wrist is no help there. This one covers the ground.
One size fits most, so my grandson can wear them too
Tyler is ten and he sorts pocket change with me on Sunday afternoons. His hands are small and these still stay on him well enough for him to pick up a nickel without dropping it. I am not going to hand a kid something precious and then tell him to be careful. I hand him a pair out of the box, and if he wanders off with one, the box is not going to run empty.
They wash and go back into the rotation
Into a mesh bag, through the wash, air dry, back into the box. Mine have been through that more times than I can count and I have not had a seam let go yet. A glove that cannot be washed gets worn until it is filthy and then thrown out, which turns a handling habit into a running errand to the store. Washable is the detail that keeps the habit going past the first month.
Pulling one on slows me down
This is the part I did not expect. The glove is a small ceremony. When I pull one on, I stop talking and start paying attention, and I hold the coin by the rim without having to remind myself to. A retired shop teacher will tell you that a person handles a thing better once he has put on the right clothes for it. Five seconds of pulling on a glove buys me a slower five minutes at the desk.
Handling gloves and cleaning gloves stop being the same gloves
A coin that has sat in a holder for years has dust on the holder, not on the coin. I want one pair for the coin and a different pair for the tray, the desk and the cardboard boxes. Use the same pair for both jobs and you are moving grit from a shelf onto the face of a Morgan dollar. Twelve pairs means I can keep a clean set and a grubby set and never mix them up.
Photographs come out cleaner without fingers in the frame
When I put a duplicate on a forum or send a picture to a friend from the club, the coin sits on the felt pad and I hold it by the edges with gloved fingertips. No shine where my hand was, no thumb in the corner of the shot, and the surface looks on screen the way it looks in the room. That matters more than people admit when the other fellow is deciding whether he wants to trade with you.
What I'd Skip
I would skip gloves with rubberized palms, and I would skip anything sold as a coin handling glove with a specialty label on the box. You want plain, thin, washable cotton that pulls off easily and does not leave lint on a proof surface. I would also skip the ceremony for circulated coins. Tyler's jar of wheat pennies gets sorted barehanded at the kitchen table every Sunday and that is fine, because those coins have already been through forty years of pockets and cash drawers. Save the gloves for the uncirculated pieces, the silver dollars, and anything you plan to keep in a flip for the next twenty years.
The fix is not a better cloth. The fix is never letting the oil land in the first place.
Twelve pairs in the box and no reason to handle a good coin barehanded again
Zealor cotton gloves, 24 pieces, lightweight, washable and reusable, large at 9.2 inches long and 3.4 inches wide. Keep one pair clean for the coins and one pair grubby for everything else.
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