Discover how to clean coins with COKE (or Pepsi) yourself at home. See the SURPRISING EFFECTS this method has on a copper penny!
RELATED VIDEO: My CLEANING COINS Playlist
RELATED ARTICLE: How To Clean Coins Safely
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 Coke or Pepsi, you’ll want to watch this video FIRST and then read our helpful tips for cleaning coins safely at home yourself…
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⚡TIMESTAMPS FROM THE VIDEO⚡
00:00 – How To Clean Coins With Coke Or Pepsi
00:10 – Why I’ve Avoided This Experiment Until Now
00:36 – How Much Coke To Use
00:50 – How Long Does It Take Coke / Pepsi To Clean Coins?
01:09 – Tips Before You Do This Experiment Yourself
01:20 – Can Coke Clean A Quarter? (RESULTS)
02:11 – Can Coke Clean A Dime? (RESULTS)
02:48 – Can Coke Clean A Nickel? (RESULTS)
03:43 – Can Coke Clean A Penny? (RESULTS)
04:13 – What Coin Collectors Look For With Cleaned Coins
05:08 – Bottom Line: Pepsi Cleans Pennies (Copper) Best
05:29 – Rinse The Coins With Water, Then Pat Them Dry
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TRANSCRIPT:
Hey, how’s it going today y’all? This is Josh with The Fun Times Guide to Coins. I am going to see what happens when I clean coins with soda. I have never tried this before. And I’m not really a big fan of cleaning coins for various reasons. One of the big reasons being the fact that when you clean coins you damage the surface, and lower the value, and you basically impair the coin for the rest of its existence — because it won’t be original.
But I’ve seen a lot of forums where people are trying this out where they use Coke or Pepsi or other sodas to clean their coins. And I thought, “Well, what would happen if I did this? What would the results be? So, yesterday I went ahead and I poured a little bit of soda into a plastic cup. And I placed in there — let’s see, I’ve got a quarter… I’ve got a penny… a dime… a nickel… the 4 most commonly encountered coins in circulation (or pocket change). And I wanted to see how they would turn out after 24 hours in this soda bath.
And as you see here, I actually have the coins partially submerged — so we could get kind of a side-by-side comparison of how the coins looked BEFORE I cleaned them versus AFTER they’ve been in the soda wash for 24 hours. So now we’re going to see exactly how these coins turned out. So I’m here with a sink — with the stopper pulled up, so that nothing goes down the drain as I rinse off the soda from the coins. And we’ll see how these all turned out. So let’s go ahead and pull out the first coin. Here’s a quarter. And let’s see how 24 hours in a soda bath did…
And well… The reverse (so the tail’s side) looks kind of the same. There’s a little bit of difference here on the obverse. You’ll see there’s some staining here. A patination (patina). The whole quarter kind of looked like this. It had that gray base with some greenish and brownish patina. I don’t know if the soda works so well at getting the quarter cleaner… but I do see some improvement. There’s a little bit of a line on the coin showing a difference left and right. So yeah, it made a little bit of an impact. Not a huge impact. Let’s try some other results here. Let’s see, this is a dime.
Let’s see how the dime looks… A marginal difference. I think I see a line maybe this way. This being the submerged part. That being the unsubmerged part. The reverse looks the same. The obverse (or the head’s side)… I don’t know if it made a big difference or not. I do see a little bit of a line. Okay, here we go… There’s a little bit of a line right here on the right. So the right side was the submerged side, and it looks a little bit lighter. But not a huge difference.
Let’s try the nickel… All right. There’s the nickel. And let’s see how this nickel looks after 24 hours in a bath of Pepsi. And… all right, now here we go! Wait a minute, let’s see. Oh okay, so the left was the submerged side (on the reverse). The right, unsubmerged. It is lighter. So, as with a quarter, the kind of darkish patination was removed. Yeah. Okay, so the left side in this case here (or the obverse)… that was the submerged side. There’s a difference. This side (the right side) was NOT submerged in soda. And yeah… same over here. So you can see there definitely was a lightening of the surface and the removal of the patination.
Now, we’ve got the penny. Bear in mind that while these coins have very similar kinds of copper nickel compositions, the penny in this case being a 19… What date was it again? It was a copper ’78. Wow! Okay, this 1978 penny which was the 95% copper 5% zinc composition (the old bronze)… and look at that! Now you can see here, the penny definitely was affected by the Pepsi! Look at that! The left side — which was the submerged side — was in the Pepsi. And it’s a lot lighter than the right side is. Which you can see here has the original brown patina. Which actually in my eyes and in many collectors’ eyes… this is the more desirable color here. It’s the one on the right. The kind of brown chocolate color. That’s what most collectors would be vying for.
And note too… the reason why the reverse is completely clean, whereas the right has that definition there… I noticed that when I put these coins up against the sidewall of the of the cup (especially the penny and the dime) that the soda through being up against the side of the cup actually had submerged most if not all of the reverse side of the penny and the dime. So I’m looking really at the obverse here in this case (especially on the penny) to see the difference — and there’s a clear difference. The Pepsi did clean the penny quite effectively. We saw probably lesser results (lesser definition) between the left and right on the nickel, dime, and quarter. But cleaning pennies with soda definitely does the job — if that’s what you’re trying to do.
So there you have it. I’m going to go ahead and rinse these coins off with some running water to get all that soda off. Because these coins don’t want to live too much longer in a soda existence. And we’ll go ahead and get these coins here rinsed off and pat dry. Notice I’m not gonna rub these coins with the towel. I’m just gonna go ahead and pat them dry — so as to reduce any friction on the coin and thus not impart any hairlines. If you want to clean your coins with soda, it works! Especially in the case of pennies or copper coins. So, thank you for watching this video. I hope you found it interesting. I definitely found this quite fascinating really how this soda works. I wish all the best in your collecting adventures. And take care.
