Coins: In earlier times hotels/ casinos used to wash coins in a regular washing machine. Put ‘em in a sock and let them scrub. Works great for normal sweat/grease/etc. If the coins were in the ocean and have sea growth on them just leave them alone. The sea growth is mostly calcium and usually etches the metal somewhat so they look worse after you get it off. My divers used to bring sea bottom coins in occasionally. We tried cleaning a few but the effort was never impressive. My favorite is an 1921 Morgan dollar that probably went in the ocean during WW II and was found about 1980. Really crusty. I cleaned it enough to read it but have left it alone since. Unless you’re talking a large quantity I’d say just make a neat display out of them and call it good.
I don’t think these coins are worth anything.
As far as I can tell, they are are all regular nickels, dimes, pennies, quarters and half dollars that are no older than 1965. Most are from the 90’s and later.
I don’t know what my father got on them, but he had them sitting in a bathroom sink for years in an effort to clean them. They are crusty from whatever got on them in the first place and his effort to clean them.
I think I made the situation worse in my efforts to clean them. I got a lot of the crust off, but now most of the coins are so dark that I don’t think the coin reader at the bank will be able to read most of them, but I think now they will at least pass through the machine and into the rejection box without gumming up the works, literally, in the machine.
There’s probably about $100 worth of coins.
The sock idea is a good idea for other coins I found—the coins that were all over the car and are dirty but have never been washed yet.
If all else fails, I may just throw them in some fountain somewhere where they take the coins passed into it and give them to charity. They can be someone else’s problem if they want to try to deal with it.