You're right; I see the
IMP now; I
had been seeing it as
part of the
cuirass.
It wasn't actually that hard to clean. When I looked closely, it looked as though it
had been carelessly cleaned, and then treated with Dellers or something similar, over the remaining crud. So I gave it a boil in washing soda, which does sometimes shift greenies, though as I suspected, it didn't affect this one. After a scrub, I'd got rid of a lot of loose dirt, and found a lot more of the white encrustations underneath it. There was no
patina, so I didn't have to worry about using chemicals. given the thickness of the coin, the encrustations weren't that thick, which helped, as there wasn't much chance of serious
pitting underneath. So I adapted one of Salem's methods, and gave it short soaks in white vinegar, with copious brushing between, and frequent examinations in case it harmed the coin. as you see, it worked well; the deposits were all carbonates, and acid will, of course, dissolve that in no time. As far as I can see, it didn't affect the metal at all. It's the first time I've used it, but I'll do so again, when I've got these thick deposits to cut through, and no
patina.
