Will Cleaning a Penny with Alcohol Work?

I tried it and the results were very minor if any at all. In fact, alcohol may do more harm than good because of the chemical effects on the metal, and probably just adds more corrosion.

So no, alcohol is no good for anything except to clean a penny or coin of germs and bacteria, that it will do. But to clean them for the visual effect of shininess and looking new, alcohol doesn’t do well. It may get the penny clean but the penny doesn’t look like it. And that’s with pretty much any kind of alcohol.

I’ll only waste your time if I show you a picture of this one. Alcohol just does no good making a penny shiny. Maybe it does better on a nickel, dime or quarter? Actually I just tried a quarter. Nothing. Squeaky clean and disinfected, yes, but shiny no. Strange…

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Will Tomato Sauce Actually Clean Pennies?

Tomato Sauce to clean a penny?

This sounds weird, so I had to try it.

I decided to try tomato sauce because tomato sauce supposedly can clean many things and is always said to be able to clean or remove powerful odors like skunk smell, amongst others. Interesting…

Did it work?

If you think about it, after tomato sauce usually comes out of a can and then when the can is washed out the can is quite shiny inside. That’s scary because I wonder if the metal from cans actually ends up in the sauce and we get mild dosages of heavy metal poisoning…hmm…that is worth a look in itself and hopefully someone out there has done some research or maybe there is a good site with some top links to answers for questions like this…anyhow here is a picture with the results:

Pennies cleaned with tomato sauce

It worked…yup…tomato sauce can clean a penny quite well…impressive and surprising!

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Clean Pennies With Vinegar and Salt

How About Just Salt and Vinegar for cleaning pennies?

You know…salt and vinegar…like the potato chips…

Does the baking soda really add to the cleaning process?  Maybe, from the oxidation.  But here’s my result minus the baking soda, just cleaning pennies with salt and vinegar…

pennies cleaned with salt and vinegar

Ok…maybe the baking soda did help…but I’d say just salt and vinegar still did a decent job to clean a penny or two…stay tuned for more of how to clean a penny!

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OK, time for how to clean a penny with all 3 as a super mega solution – Salt, Baking Soda and Vinegar…

baking soda vinegar and salt to clean a penny

In my last 2 posts, you’ve seen these used separately or maybe the baking soda and vinegar in combination. But we also know that salt water did OK on its own, and so is there a way that all 3 do an even better job cleaning a penny than they do by themselves of in lower combinations?

SO here are our 3 ingredients, salt, vinegar and baking soda…the controls part of this is we’re using the same exact ingredients used previously, the same brands and actual source boxes, so we don’t increase or decrease our chances for drawing the wrong conclusions…all things being equal…in other words

The results:

Here’s the bubbly picture of all 3 fizzing away to clean the pennies…

bubbling to clean a penny

Here’s the end result…I actually decided to go ahead and try to clean a bunch of pennies with the solution

Wow…all 2 in combo sure did the trick…this is amongst the best results yet as a cleaning solution for how to clean pennies and coins…a neat idea I think…stay tuned for more trials with other common household products!

13 pennies cleaned by baking soda vinegar and salt in combination

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We’ve tried baking soda by itself and we’ve tried vinegar by itself to clean a penny…

baking soda vinegar and pennies

Will combining both do a better job of cleaning a penny in light of the chemical reaction?

baking soda vinegar and clean pennies

The result is yes, cleaning pennies with both seemed to actually do better than cleaning with them separately.

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Can Vinegar Clean a Penny?

vinegar to clean a penny

Yes it can! The acid in Vinegar seems to do a a pretty good job of making a penny shiny and cleaning it up to a point.

I remember when I used Tabasco, the Vinegar and the hot sauce acids must have done the same thing. So I decided to try Vinegar by itself to clean a penny and sure enough it did the trick. Try this for yourself. Pour only a little vinegar onto the penny, wait 5 minutes, then turn it over and rub it on a cloth.

Then do the other side the same way and your penny will look clean. A quick and easy way to clean a penny. See my picture with the result of how vinegar cleans a penny.

pennies cleaned with vinegar

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Can Baking Soda By Itself Clean a Penny?

baking soda to clean a penny

You must use water of course. But Baking Soda is touted as such a great cleaner all the time, that it’s found its way into several cleaning products from carpet cleaning products to toothpaste. So if it’s such a great cleaner, shouldn’t it work on a penny?

I added the water, soaked the penny in the solution for a bit, and then I started rubbing and scrubbing the penny in the baking soda mush. The result? Some of the dirt came off and it got a bit shinier actually, but I was not too impressed. Take a look for yourself…some result but nothing that would turn into the next big penny or coin cleaner invention:

baking soda clean a penny result

I began to wonder about all that baking soda hype that started several years ago…

But what about baking soda mixed with other ingredients? I’ll save that in another how to clean a penny post.

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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!

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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!

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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!

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