Went into my studio to work today and couldn't find the piece on my workbench that I was last working on.  Took a look in the pickle crock pot and there it was, but instead of being shiny silver, it was gunmetal black!  There was no other metal in the pot, so I could not understand how that could have happened.  Deciding that something had contaminated the pickle, I picked up the ceramic part of the pot to dump into my used pickle jar and discovered that the metal part of the pot was all rusty and corroded inside!  How that happened, I don't know.  The ceramic part didn't appear to have a crack in it.  At some point though, water or pickle water got into the metal part of the crock pot.  The pickle in the ceramic part of the pot looked very clear and clean.  So I'm still not sure how it was contaminating the silver in the ceramic pot unless it was via condensation on the lid leaching somehow into the pickle.

It's a mystery and my jewelry piece that I had accidentally left in the pickle all night was ruined.  Needless to say, I'm purchasing a new crock pot tomorrow and starting over.  This time I will keep checking the metal part of the pot for problems.

Has anyone else experienced a similar situation with their pickle pot?