How well does salt (salt water) clean a penny?

salt to clean a penny

Salt by itself does nothing but if mixed with water, the liquid can be applied to a penny to try to soak it for a while and then clean the penny. I’ve found that salt water does not do so well when trying to clean a penny. I could barely tell if it cleaned the penny at all, in fact.

Since the results of cleaning a penny with salt water are barely noticeable, I conclude that on a scale of 1 to 10 for 1 being the best product to use to clean a penny and 10 being the worst to clean a penny, I rate saltwater as a 9.

That’s not to say that over a long time salt may not clean a penny, but I think salt over time may even do more harm than good because it can cause oxidation and actually more quickly corrode than clean a penny (if mixed with oxygen from the air that is).

Can Saltwater Preserve a Shiny Penny and Clean It Over Time?

Salt is a preservative. But if a penny is in salt water versus on land next to salt water, that too may have different results. Consider lost treasure coins, versus the statue of liberty and how metals like copper corrode when sea salt air and the metal combine (as in the statue of liberty case, where it becomes green).

Submerged though, some metals seem to not corrode and are preserved and cleaned and therefore shiny like pennies in a wishing well…so even in non-salt-water for that matter. The oxygen is more of a problem then, than the water alone.

Pennies after cleaning with salt water

Will a copper penny not only preserve a shine but get shinier if it’s left in salt water? That would require a longer term experiment. Mine was a short term soak and rub with salt experiment (for a few minutes) and as you can see by my pictures, the results were negligible. The penny on the right was pretty much that shiny to begin with. I always start with a dirty and slightly shiny penny to see whether either get shinier. the dull penny stayed dull, the shiny penny got just a little shinier.

Next time I’ll try baking soda to clean a penny in the same way. Stay tuned to see what happens!

Posted in: How To Clean a Penny | Comments(0)

I’ve wondered…

Will the oil that cuts grease in orange cleaner work well for cleaning a penny, whether dirt, corrosion or tarnish on the copper and alloy mix found in a penny?

Here’s what my pennies looked like before I cleaned them with the orange cleaner/degreaser:

As you can see, this degreaser i used was not full strength but instead was diluted by about a 1 to 10 ratio.

I want to show you a picture of the pennies drenched in the orange cleaner-degreaser so here they are:

I didn’t see a reaction against what was on the surface of the pennies with the orange cleaner degreaser, as I did with the Tabasco as described in my previous post about cleaning pennies with Tabasco. So what was the outcome you ask?

I was actually a bit disappointed with the outcome, and expected a lot cleaner pennies. Here’s what the pennies looked like after I let the orange cleaner sit for a couple minutes: Like I said, and as you can see, a bit disappointing. Orange cleaner doesn’t appear to be good to clean a penny, but it was worth a try!

Posted in: How To Clean a Penny | Comments(0)

I had a Penny, I saw the Tabasco, and decided to give it a try…

Can Tabasco actually clean a penny?

I gave this a test, with two pennies, one dirty older penny and one semi shiny but tarnished penny. Here’s what the pennies looked like before I applied the Tabasco. How well did this work? First, here’s what the pennies looked like with the Tabasco on them. I left the Tabasco on them for only one minute.

Right away I could see that the Tabasco was starting to clean the pennies. But how well did Tabasco clean the pennies? A picture is worth…

And there you have it…it worked pretty well! Out of 5 stars I give Tabasco 3 stars for cleaning a penny quite well. Tabasco will clean a penny because of the acid in it from probably both the hot sauce acid and the vinegar (also an acid). These acids seem to work well for cleaning pennies when combined, but I would like to test them separately.

My Next Step for Cleaning a Penny

I have yet to try to clean a penny with vinegar and other hot sauces and spicy things. I will try several things and see what works best then let you know.

This ought to be an interesting journey to try to find the next natural penny cleaner that won’t harm the environment, is cheap and does a great job. I really didn’t care for trying to clean a penny using Brasso, can you tell from my previous post?

Stay tuned for more experiments and trials on best ways for how to clean a penny!

Posted in: How To Clean a Penny | Comments(0)

But here’s the real kicker about cleaning coins with Brasso…SHOULD a penny be cleaned using Brasso? My answer is an emphatic no, unless you need to shine it quickly and really don’t mind what the penny or coin looks like a week later, and if you don;t mind some of the metal rubbing off.

Disadvantages of using Brasso to clean coins:

• Brasso is a chemical and therefore can be hazardous or toxic if you’re not careful

• Brasso scrubs some of the metal off, and the coins lose value that way

• Brasso is messy and takes several cloths, gets a blackoily metal film all over your hands and clothes of you’re not careful

• The penny loses it’s shiny luster after a week or two, and then looks just as bad if not worse from some sort of corrosion caused by the brasso and your fingerprint oil

Brasso is a quick fix for how tro clean a penny and probably the quickest and easiest way to clean a penny but it is definitely not the best way, and may be one of the worst in the long run. To me using Brasso is not the way to go if you can avoid it, for cleaning a penny or any coin. I recommend against it.

Posted in: Cleaning Coins, How To Clean a Penny | Comments(0)