Anything I should consider or avoids. Was thinking of just some steel wool.

AAAAHH!!!

Please don't even say it. You should find/buy a cloth used to polish silver. This is used Without! any other cleaner. It has cleaner within its fibers. Using this will allow you to Slowly work away the dirt till you get a shine.

Either that or you might go for some Gentle polishing compounds. You can't put back what you take away. Stay away from Tarnex and Naval jelly, too strong. You need to polish the high parts but let the tarnish, or even dirt, stay in the nooks and crannies.

P

No to steel wool
what do you mean by cleaning?
type of gimmick?
a folding coin, rubber band in grove kinda thing
dirt in the [
all sorts of things to do to clean.
if you mean to polish, use toothpaste and a cotton cloth.
if you want to clean dirt inside your [
soap and water with soft cloth
be careful with sharp pointed tools
you can scratch your gimmick coins and possibly

a little more info and we can point you down the right path.

stop them from working smoothly, flips etc...

Octopus Sun, a little off topic but can you tighten a slppery sam if its a little loose? if so how - it only needs a very minor tweak. I have tried rolling it with a coin in it and applying pressure to no avail and don't want to squeeze it with channel locks. any ideas?

Poof, the way I would try is by putting the coin into it that should be the right size, and rolling a bic lighter around the outside edge with the coin held firmly on the other side.

I assume you were kidding, right?

Don't buy anything - warm water toothpaste & toothbrush is all you need! Works like a charm on silver/copper coins real or gimmicked!

Poof I'm not sure how loose your coins are but cablerock is correct imo.

Yes, Todd Lassen has a post on his blog that shows how to tighten a slippery sam with a bic lighter - I used this to tighten my U3F and it worked like a dream - literally took 2 seconds.

I use Flitz for my coins. It also resists acids for the hands that will tarnish them faster. Just a little dab will do ya. Polish with a soft micro fibre cloth and you're back in buisness.

There are a number of methods to cleaning coins, though some of them are more effective than others. Several of the methods described above will work nicely. My favorite method involves white vinegar and baking soda. Here's a video that walks you through it step by step: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oteq49pfjn0

Do it, then follow up with the dremel and grinder since most seem to be so hard up for soft coins.

Cleaning copper coins also uses white vinegar but instead of baking soda use a pinch of salt.

I recently bought a Tango half dollar sam which doesn't lock at all. In fact there's quite a bit of play in it. Is anyone familiar with this?

There is a thread about this already dorian just a few posts down.

I use steel wool for silver coins.
But do not use it on the gimmick contains magnet.
If you want to cleaned your pennies, just put the them in vinegar for a few seconds.
But I don't think the copper coins need to be cleaned or polished.