I purchased a small lot of uncleaned
Greek coins the other week, which is new territory for me. Lot is pictured below, minus two coins that
had some small BD areas that I separated for treatment. Overall, very pleased with the variety -- no
LRB in sight and some very interesting reverses. These pictured soaked for a week in DW and have been lightly brushed.
Coins arrived tightly wrapped in masking tape. I noticed an odd and unpleasant smell immediately upon opening but didn't think much of it at the time. After separating the two with BD, I soaked the remaining population in DW for an hour or so, brushed them, re-soaked to further loosen the easy dirt, then rebrushed and dropped them in a
jar of DW for a week. Resulting dirt that sluffed on in the soak was bright
red brown in color, which differs from the brown mud I see come off uncleaned coins from the Balkans.
Last night I opened
jar and let me tell you, the coins literally STANK. Like a putrid metallic aroma, nothing I've experienced before. To counter the stench, I put some Dawn dishsoap in the DW
bowl, stirred a few times, and rinsed repeatedly with DW to flush the soap off. No putrid aroma after that.
I'll probably put these in DW for another month before revisiting. In the meantime, has anyone else ever
had a batch of coins that smelled seriously bad? I'm stumped as to the reason.
