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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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.

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