That Special Aroma Of Coins

Copper and bronze coins have a distinctive smell.
The oils in the skin of your fingers is acidic, and will react with copper to produce complex organo-copper compounds.

I would think that sulfur is involved. Many sulfur compounds are smelly. Visual evidence that a chemical reaction has taken place can be seen in permanent fingerprint staining seen on copper and bronze coins.

Not only do copper and bronze coins get stained.
So does the skin of your fingers, and the need to wash them arises.

Other metals such as silver, can also be affected; there may be other metals that react with natural skin oils as well.

I doubt that metals smell. However, if you think about it, after so many people have handled a coin, they possibly left enough STUFF on it to make it smell. Hate to say but might me from someone that picked his nose and then handled the coins. So many other things that someone may have been doing with their hands and then handling coins. Now you have them and bring them into your house where the heat and humidity add to those now contaminated coins.

My father had hundreds of paper rolls of circulated Wheat Cents that he kept in his old cigar boxes in the basement of our house (without a dehumidifier).

I still affectionately remember the smell of dirty coins, old paper rolls, and a slight tobacco and musty smell when going through his coins.

I have most of those rolls now, but I keep them in plastic bins upstairs. Not quite the same aroma. Still nice memories of digging through dad's coins as a kid.

Pot, pizza & pine trees. That's just a few pcs. that have smells incorporated into them.

I've wondered what these would smell like over time.

But I get where you're coming from. One of my oldest memories is from a basement, where my dad always had a bag of cents or silver spread out over multiple tables. (in '64) When it rained, the scent
would gravitate upstairs. But tasting was verbotten

I do like how my Dansco albums smell.

I was on a course for foreign students at Lyon in France when I was 17, and there were other students from all over the world. I used to ask them if I could buy money from their countries. One American student called Charlie gave me a 1974 dated Dollar bill. He held it to his nose before giving it to me and told me that American notes could always be identified by their smell! I still have the dollar today!

Smell is among the strongest of our senses when it comes to evoking the past, and this certainly applies to old coins.