The perils of cleaning your coins

Recently picked up an early sceatta, East Anglian type "series R" with the moneyer Wigraed. It was from a well known dealer but through eBay.

The coin was not a high grade monster but in ok shape, probably a fairly fresh detecting find. It looked like it would benefit from a soak in distilled water. I put it in a disposable plastic cup of water and left it about a week ago.

Went to check on it last night, the cup was gone. Thrown away presumably by my mother in law a few days ago, almost certainly thinking to herself 'how did I let my daughter marry this messy fool...' My wife would never touch any of my stuff in the den but others are less concerned. The coin, tiny as it is (these things are 11-12 mm in diameter) was presumably completely unnoticed.

My heart sank when I saw the cup gone. In all odds the water from the cup was spilled into the sink or toilet and the coin lost to the waters of time.

I began a frantic search to see if maybe by some miracle the coin was still in the cup. Went through a couple of trash bags until the cup was located- empty of course.

My last forlorn of forlorn hope was that perhaps the cup was dumped in the kitchen sink, and the coin fell into the drain catch, which was at some point dumped into the garbage. I had not yet thrown away the kitchen bag. Now I have the fun task of digging through kitchen waste bags full of decaying fruit and vegetable waste, animal bones, coffee grounds, and essentially a mess of disgusting. I took out my metal detector and tried to scan portions of it but there was too much false signals, from foil wrappers, bottle caps, and just all the metal stuff inside the house. It was fruitless, I had to dig with my hands.

I was ready to give up when at the bottom of the last bag, covered in coffee grounds and looking far dirtier than when I originally tried to clean it, sat the coin of Wigraed.

There's a lesson in here somewhere.

Maybe it's 'don't clean your coins' or 'collect something bigger so you don't lose it so easily'. Or maybe 'put your coins in holders right away'. It's not nearly as easy to lose Air-Tite holders.

 

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Phew! I'm glad you found it! My heart had also sunk on your behalf until you revealed your heroic recovery of the coin . I think you should keep a print-out of this story with the coin - it adds heaps (of coffee grounds and other things) to its history!

 

I think that epic story needs to be added to the provenance ;-)

Makes you wonder how many times this little coin has come back from the dead over the centuries!

 

Excellent story, Nap! Definitely a harrowing experience.

 

An epic tale-- what persistence our hero had!

I'm so glad you found it

 

man, that was a thrilling read!



Glad it had a happy ending!!!

 

Glad you found it!

I think the lesson is more about training your relatives than cleaning coins.

 

Here is the coin:



I still think it might benefit from conservation, but not this year..

 

Clearly extraterrestrial. Ask Fox Mulder.

 

Silver plated?

 

Oh man, I can empathize, Nap. My wife has been EXTREMELY patient this past week while I have soaked coins in acetone (and a new chemical I experimented with for what might have been paint residue) in various glass containers on the kitchen counter. I wouldn't have blamed her if she had tossed them away. So, I've pledged to clean my workbench in the garage so I can practice alchemy out there.
Steve
PS I will eventually post the results of my experiment with the new cleaner for comment. I'm giving the V nickel the "pocket treatment" for a few weeks.

 

One can relate to this story. I once had two extremely nice Celtic fibulae which had been seriously over-cleaned. I decided to bury them in the ground and let them tone back down naturally. Yea, one can guess, I forgot where I put them. They aren't gone, just sitting somewhere ready for another to dig them up in another thousand years and assume that the Celts had mysteriously settled California.

My one and only entry into cleaning via electrolysis resulted in my disintegrating a very rare coin. Too many variables (the solution, the power level, the time, etc). I no longer clean anything. I do still have a nice EF+ Maximianus sestertius I am trying to tone down. Over the winter I nearly lost it a couple times, it currently resides in a pot of soil on top of my water heater as I know not what the heck to do with it.

 

I have never cleaned any coin in my collection. I even avoid touching them, unless wearing special handling gloves. I usually get them in flips from auctions, most of these I carefully then place in mylar flips.

 

(That story really was exciting!) I have never cleaned a coin. Although I own those little white cotton gloves, for some reason I never use them. I think I will take the next step in being serious about my coins and start wearing my gloves.

 

Welcome to CT, @LaCointessa!
Steve

 

I second that motion!
John

 

Ditto

 

I just got a metal detector for my son on his birthday. I'll send him over and he will have them for you in about 5 minutes.

 

Never get married?

 

Welcome LaCointessa! Unless you have immaculate gold or silver coins, don't wear gloves. Ancient coins should be touched, as much as possible.