How to clean PENNIES with vinegar + How to clean SILVER COINS with vinegar. See how well vinegar removes TARNISH from coins!
RELATED VIDEO: Other Ways To CLEAN COINS Yourself
RELATED ARTICLE: Tips For CLEANING COINS SAFELY
Wondering how to clean coins with VINEGAR? See the best way to clean OXIDIZED COINS yourself. What happens if you SOAK the coins when you’re cleaning coins with vinegar? In this video, you’ll see EXACTLY what happens when you soak coins in vinegar!
============================
⚡TIMESTAMPS FROM THE VIDEO⚡
00:00 – How To Clean Coins With Vinegar
00:10 – Reasons NOT To Clean Coins
00:59 – What Happens If You Soak Coins In Vinegar
01:09 – First Example: A Clad Quarter
01:24 – Second Example: A Darker Penny
02:12 – Result After Soaking Quarter For 2 Hrs In Vinegar
03:57 – Dipping The Penny In Vinegar
04:07 – How To Rinse Coins Soaked In Vinegar
04:25 – How To Properly Dry A Coin Without Damaging It
05:01 – Result After Rinsing And Drying The Quarter
05:23 – Result After Soaking A Penny 2 Minutes In Vinegar
05:33 – Rubbing An Abrasive Agent (Baking Soda) On A Penny
05:59 – Darkening Of Baking Soda Proves Patina Is Removed
06:22 – Result After Rubbing A Penny With Baking Soda
06:31 – Result After Rinsing And Drying The Penny
06:41 – Bottom Line: How To Clean Coins With Vinegar
============================
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey everybody! This is Josh with The Fun Times Guide to Coins and I want to share with you how to clean coins using vinegar. Now, first things off the bat… I do not support cleaning coins because what happens is when you clean a coin it can damage the surface, and thus lower its value. So I would never recommend doing this.
The other point I want to make is… cleaning coins is something that you really just don’t want to do because when you clean your coins, you can’t get back that original patina. Like for example, you know a penny would have. A lot of people love old pennies. One of the charms of an old penny is discoloration. Copper is a very reactive metal, and it tends to gain a patina very quickly. I love chocolate brown, old Lincoln cents. Those are the way they should look. When you try to clean an old penny to look new, it just looks clean – at the end of the day. So don’t clean your coins.
But because, again, I want to share with you how to do it because people ask about it here at The Fun Times Guide… how do you clean coins with vinegar… I want to show you what I found here for results. First things first, I’ve got here a clad quarter that is halfway submerged in a little cup of vinegar. It’s been there now for about 2 hours. And i want to see how the vinegar cleaned that coin. I also have here a darker Lincoln cent. I want to see if the vinegar will remove some of that dark coloration (that patina). I’ve got some baking soda as well. The vinegar of course. And then your sink… with the stopper up so that coins will not go down the drain. And I have here a soft white cloth. First things first… let’s see how this quarter looks after 2 hours in the vinegar. Did it come clean? Or did it not. That’s what we want to find out. Let’s go ahead and remove the vinegar from the cup. And they are just gonna just sit there by the drain – because it is stopped. Again, the stopper’s up. That’s good enough. All right, let’s go ahead and pull this quarter out and let’s see what we’ve got!
Okay. Well, there’s a difference. So if you look here at just the right light. Maybe you can see it here. The left side of the coin that was submerged is brighter. Yeah, it’s still dark — but it does look like it’s a few shades lighter than the right side of the coin which was not dipped in vinegar. So you can see that the vinegar did make a difference. Maybe it’s not as dramatic as some would hope when cleaning their coins. But there’s a difference. So the vinegar when using it to soak your coins for a length of time will, you know, make it look cleaner. So there you go there with that. The left side is cleaned. The right side, not cleaned. That’s your difference there with a quarter.
I’ve got here a 1999-D (Denver) Lincoln cent. It’s darker. You know… it’s got some… it’s got some luster to it. You can see the striations (or rather the flow lines). It’s got a few striations here from some surface wear perhaps and handling. It’s not too bad, but it is darker. A lot of folks like their coins to look lighter. Especially when there are people who don’t… you know… who are new to the hobby and would want the coins to look brighter. I will tell you that seasoned collectors like the coins to appear original as mother nature made them look. And that, therefore, is why you do not clean your coins. Let the effects of nature and time do their thing on the coins. As long as it’s not corroded or porous, normally the collector will rather have the chocolate brown Lincoln cent versus the artificially lightened Lincoln cent.
Let’s go ahead here… I’m going to just dip it in some vinegar just for a minute or so. Let’s see what happens in that short duration of soaking. In the meantime, I want to show you while I’ve got the sink nearby and the towel. When you’re done soaking your coins and vinegar, make sure you rinse them off using cold running water. There we go… Rinse off that vinegar. And then… let’s go ahead and pat dry. Not rub, but pat dry that quarter. The reason why I insist on patting dry the quarter — not rubbing it dry — is when you rub a towel on a coin, the nap of the cloth and the fibers can actually create striations on the coin (hair lines), and you don’t want hair lines. Even though this is a clean quarter, in my eyes it’s not a quarter I would collect because it’s been cleaned. You don’t want to do more damage by imparting lines on it. So that’s why I would never rub a quarter (or any coin) dry. I would always pat dry it. Yeah… I mean the vinegar. Again, that made a difference. Two hours in the vinegar, and it’s lighter. I mean, it’s still a dark quarter, you know overall, but there’s a difference there.
Let’s go ahead and check out our 1999 Lincoln cent. And get my hands all vinegary. And it didn’t make a big difference at all really. That’s just a couple of minutes, mind you. A lot of folks when they’re using vinegar to clean coins will also employ something like baking soda or toothpaste or another kind of abrasive agent to remove the grit and grime and patina — as we’ll do here. We’ll go ahead and use some baking soda to just rub into the coin. To see if it makes any immediate difference at all in the way it appears. Let’s see, there we go… in the corners of course. I can see some dark baking soda — so it’s removing some of that patina as we speak. The difference… let’s use a little bit more baking soda and really get into the corners. Get that deep down grime out of there. Yeah that baking soda is turning turning gray… turning charcoal… so we’re getting some effect. It probably is not a huge difference though. Yeah, that’s a difference. I wouldn’t say it looks new. But it’s lighter, for sure. Let’s rinse off some of that baking soda and vinegar from this penny. Pat it dry. And we’ll call it a day with that.
I would say using vinegar you get mixed results. I mean, you definitely have to have — especially if you want FAST results — you have to have some baking soda or toothpaste or something else abrasive to really remove the patina and all that. Although soaking a coin in vinegar will yield results in most cases. Again, I don’t advocate this. Don’t clean your coins. But this is how you would use vinegar to clean coins if you did. So… this is Josh with The Fun Times Guide. I appreciate your watching this video. If it helps a little bit in finding out why I wouldn’t clean coins. But if you did… how you might do it. Please like, comment, and share. And happy collecting!
