See how to CLEAN COINS with bleach at home yourself. And wait til you see what happens when I clean a silver quarter with BLEACH!
RELATED VIDEO: Other Ways To Clean Coins At Home Yourself
RELATED ARTICLE: The Safest Way To Clean Coins
WARNING: all DIY methods of coin cleaning will damage the coins! This video is for demonstration purposes only on coins that are only worth face value. If you’re thinking of cleaning coins with Bleach… you’ll want to watch this video first!
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⚡TIMESTAMPS FROM THE VIDEO⚡
00:00 – How To Clean Coins With Bleach
00:22 – Bleach Makes Coins Darker & Corrodes Them
01:05 – Reasons To Avoid Cleaning Coins With Bleach
01:25 – How To Use Bleach With Coins Safely
02:41 – Results After Using Bleach To Clean Coins
02:54 – Using Bleach To Clean A U.S. Quarter
03:14 – Using Bleach To Clean A U.S. Nickel
03:24 – Using Bleach to Clean A U.S. Penny
03:45 – The Effect Of Bleach On Silver Coins
04:11 – How Effective Is Cleaning Coins With Bleach?
05:31 – Removing The Bleach From Cleaned Coins
06:32 – The Bottom Line
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TRANSCRIPT:
Hey, this is Josh with The Fun Times Guide to Coins and we’re going to look at cleaning coins using bleach.
A lot of folks ask us about how to clean coins with bleach and what bleach can do to clean coins.
And unfortunately… while bleach is fantastic for making whites whiter and brights brighter… it’s NOT so hot for making coins cleaner. As a matter of fact, in my experience I have found that bleach tends to make coins look actually darker (rather than lighter).
Case in point… when I was first beginning to experiment with using bleach and coins when I was younger
(back when I used to clean coins – I don’t clean them anymore by practice), it actually made my silver coins appear like a dark gray — which was NOT the effect I was going for. And the same too with pennies and nickels.
It doesn’t really clean. In fact, it can actually corrode in many cases. So I tend not to use bleach with anything except for kitchen countertops and for bleaching shower stalls and those things where we’re trying to remove stains and mildew and such. But for the sake of showing you what happens when you clean coins using bleach, I want to show you here. These 3 poor souls if you will.
Again, I’m not a big fan of cleaning coins at all – because cleaning coins can actually reduce their value and it removes the top layer of metal from the tops of coins and thus causes irreversible damage. But I’m going to pour some regular bleach into this plate right here (a paper plate) and I want to make sure I stress to you guys… you do NOT want to add anything to bleach. It can cause toxic gases if you start combining other things with bleach. So I do not recommend you add anything to your bleach ever. Just use straight bleach in a well-ventilated space like I’m in right now. And let’s go ahead and dip these 3 coins in the bleach – and let’s see what happens. Leave these here a couple of minutes and see what happens.
I’ll go ahead and pour a little more bleach on top of the coins to make sure they’re fully immersed. There we go. The reason why again I am not a fan of doing this is yes, it can actually make coins appear darker and corrode surfaces. But also, too, bleach is just generally not a very safe product to use in a lot of cases – because again, you have to have ventilation. You really don’t want to breathe the fumes in. And you can have what I would consider to be unpredictable results in cases like this. And you can already see…
The quarter is getting darker. The nickel’s looking darker as well. The penny hasn’t really shown any signs of anything happening yet to it. But look at that… See that with the quarter? It’s actually looking darker on the head, Washington’s ponytail, the date, the lettering, the other letters and inscriptions, even the field is showing signs of darkening. So… that is NOT the effect I’m sure a lot of folks want when it comes to cleaning coins! The nickel… that’s a bit darker for sure. The penny is showing no signs of response at all – at least that I can tell anyway. I’m gonna go ahead and rinse off this bleach once I’m done here – so it won’t get on my hands too much. But yeah, there’s been no effects at all with the penny. But I can tell you that when I’ve bleached or soaked pennies in bleach over the years before… what tends to happen is they discolor. Especially like with a more modern zinc Lincoln cent, it can actually corrode the surface. So I really don’t recommend putting your pennies at all into bleach. And my gosh, look at that quarter!
So you’ve seen this right before your very eyes. This has been what… less than a minute that this quarter’s been immersed in bleach. It’s a silver quarter and look at that! That is literally multiple shades grayer and darker than it was before I put it in the bleach. So you can see… bleach is NOT good for cleaning silver coins at all. And I again stress for ANY coins, I wouldn’t use it.
The nickel… Let’s check out that nickel… It’s a little darker maybe in some areas, but not by a whole lot. But as you can see, it hasn’t really cleaned or lightened the surface either. So… I want you to see here what’s going on. This is not really removing anything from the surface of the coin. Maybe some of the the dirt and debris from the crevices, but it’s not lightening the surface at all. And again… no… Let’s see here… Yeah there’s been almost no effect at all on the penny. Maybe a little bit lighter actually in some areas. But again, this could progress into corrosion as time goes on – as I’ve seen in my past experiments using pennies and bleach.
But this quarter… this is NOT the effect I think you’re going for when it comes to cleaning coins. You do not I’m sure want a darker coin. You want probably a lighter coin. Look at that! That’s almost… well, it’s not black. But it’s definitely… it’s definitely dark gray. So yeah, this is NOT something that I would recommend doing your silver coins at all. And this has definitely corroborated with my other bleach cleaning experiments in the past with coins. So yeah, this is what happens when you clean coins using bleach!
We’ll go ahead and rinse off the coins using some cold water. I’ve pulled the stopper up on the sink – as you see – so that the coins will not fall down the sink. And let’s go ahead and just take the bleach off under some cold running water. Make sure it’s all off. This is actually a non-splash or low-splash bleach — so it’s a bit more viscous (or thicker) than other bleaches. We’ll pat dry (instead of rubbing) these coins. And yeah, you see bleach is NOT the best agent for cleaning coins at all. This is why I say… use bleach for making your whites whiter and your brights brighter, but DO NOT use bleach to clean your coins.
So this is Josh with The Fun Times Guide to Coins. I hope you found this experiment to be at least informational… and eye opening as well. Because again, I’m not so sure those who want to clean their coins are going after making them look DARKER. So there you have it. Let’s turn the water off to conserve water. That is what happens when you try to clean coins using bleach. You get no immediate effects at all on copper and nickel. But you certainly get a response on silver!
