How to clean a penny- The cheap way

Have you ever looked at the pennies in your car or the ones that are just lying around the junk drawer in your house? I bet they are tarnished and have some form of oxidation on them. It can be kind of nasty to grab a handful of these. I know from personal experience that the pennies in my truck seem to always be covered in some sort of dried up coffee or soda.

Have you ever wondered what is the best method to clean a penny?

You can easily clean a penny with some vinegar and table salt. Usually a tablespoon of salt for every half cup of vinegar should do the trick. You can also add more or less to see what works most effectively for your coins.

You can also try substituting lemon juice for the vinegar. Once you have this mixture set aside in a cup, get your pennies ready for cleaning! You can try a couple at a time and place them in the cup for a few minutes or so. You can try longer depending on the strength of your cleaning mixture.

The reason the cleaning occurs is because the acidic acid and salt form a hydrochloric acid. This acid helps to clean off the tarnish and other residue built up on the dirty penny.

As mentioned earlier, you can also try other types of coins to clean up your pennies.

Once the pennies are done sitting in their cleaning bath, take them out and rinse them off. This ensures that the chemical process stops. Rinse and place on a towel or paper towel to dry. Once they are nice, dry and clean you can place them back into your coin holder or collection. Which ever you prefer.

A word of warning though - this mixture will eat through zinc; so you need to determine if the pennies you are cleaning contain any zinc. If it does, then you need to be careful not to leave the coins in the acidic mixture for too long. Otherwise you may come back a few hours later with a hole in your favorite penny. Many coins in circulation however contain no zinc.