@the-coultergeist
I have considered selling it, but am not sure I want to. If I DO sell it, should I clean it? If I should clean it, what is the best way?
Your shell is a tridacna maxima (Roding, 1798) and it is very nice. Great find!
To clean or not to clean is actually a hard decision for this shell.
The reason being is that if you are selling it to a sea shell collector, there are some collectors that would want it in its natural state and some that would want it cleaned. It becomes a personal collector preference. My preference as a collector is to have it cleaned. I am a shell collector/dealer and have apprised a lot of private collections and 95% of those collections have the large clams cleaned. When I sell these, I always clean them. I seem to get a higher price when I clean them. But, I also have to weigh the time that it will take me to clean them.
The non-collector will want it cleaned if they could see the difference of one natural vs. cleaned. If you are going to sell it to just anyone, I would recommend that you clean it. From your pictures, I personally feel your shell would look so much better cleaned.
Take a look at my post on cleaning a turbo shell. It would have been hard to sell this shell in its natural state. However, when cleaned I had several people wanting to buy it. This shell took me 30 hours to get it cleaned.
Here is the link: https://community.ebay.com/t5/sea-shell-collectors/Sea-Shell-Cleaning-Before-and-After-of-a-turbo-ma...
To clean this species is always a choir and it will take you some time and patience.
The first step would be to soak it in straight bleach for at least one day. Soaking it longer won't hurt the shell. After, it has been soaked in bleach for a day, take the shell and rinse it off and let it dry.
The next step is where you will need some tools. You will need an electric etcher, several different sizes of flat head screw drivers, small wire brushes and some heavier duty picks. You can get these tools at your local hardware store.
I usually lay down a small tarp if I am attempting to clean the shell inside. So to start cleaning the shell you will have to just pick a starting point and start with the electric etcher to chip the calcium off. Be careful when you are cleaning the flutes, the etcher may knock them off and you want to preserve as many of those as you can. For the larger pieces of calcium, you will need to switch to a screwdriver to chip the tougher pieces of calcium. Use the picks for the flutes mostly.
After cleaning for a little bit, you will get a feel for which tools work better for your shell. From here you just have to keep chipping away! Periodically, you can use you wire brush to get some of the calcium off. So now it becomes a chip, pick and brush routine until all or most of the calcium is removed.
After days and lots of hours have gone by and you see that most of the calcium is gone, rinse the shell off with water, let dry. When it is dry again look at the shell closely and you may have missed a few spots. Pick/chip those areas off with whatever tool you feel will do a better job. Given my experience with cleaning this shell, there will be a few spots that have that stubborn calcium area(s) that seems impossible to remove. Not to worry, they will eventually come off. When you think you are done picking/chipping rinse the shell off one more time.
For this next step you will need some Lime Away toilet cleaner or a cleaner that has a very slight acidity to it. You can get it at your local Dollar Store. The next step would be to put the shells in bins and fill them with water until the shells are submerged fully in the water. Now start adding the Lime Away to the water until they start to bubble. You can leave them over night as long as they aren’t bubbling profusely.
The next day take the shells out of the water rinse them off with water and let them dry. After they have dried, you can look at the shells and see if any calcium is still on the shells. If there is, it will most likely come off using the etcher. If not you can soak the shell in Lime Away once more. You keep soaking the shells, pick/chip until the shells are totally cleaned to your satisfaction. You can use straight muriatic acid, but, you need to be experienced with it or your shell can get ruined. It is also be unsafe if you don’t know what you are doing. I don’t recommend using muriatic acid unless you are experienced with using it. Just be careful when using the Lime Away also as this could ruin your shell if you make the mixture to strong.
Once you finally get the shell clean, you can get some mineral oil and brush it on the shell with an old tooth brush. This will bring back most of the shells natural luster. Now you can admire the shell to its fullest and sell it for a good price! Then there is that feeling of; you spent all that time cleaning it and now want to keep it!
Hope this helps!
