The perils of cleaning your coins
Nap
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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.
Comments
Close call! Glad you were reunited with it.
8 Reales Madness Collection
Good ending to something that would of nagged at the back of your brain for a long time. Speaking of nagging at you, maybe a different moral of the story has a mother in law in it? Ok nevermind....I will leave that one unsaid.
Good save!
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I'm glad you recovered it!
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I would have some polite-but-choice words with anyone who messed with my stuff!
Or, perhaps gently inform the MIL (who was hopefully just being helpful and not overbearing), that you had left the cup there intentionally and only by luck you were able to recover the $xxx coin she had tossed. 'thankfully all is recovered but please don't do that again'.
And, next time, use a different container and leave a note next to it.
Glad you found it!
anyone has comments to add re this guy above and his pencils?
I'm just ignoring them. Seems best.
@Nap,
I'd heed Stork's advice, perhaps minus the 'polite' part.
No one should be allowed unattended in your den (or my office) without an extremely good reason. Wife is the only exception. Maybe.
No comment.
How does one get a hater to stop hating?
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