How to Clean a Penny - All About Cleaning Copper Pennies

I think one of the reasons that money is considered dirty is that after it's been in circulation a while it starts to look really dirty. So sometimes you just want to clean your pennies. So I wondered how many ways I could find to clean copper pennies. It turns out that there is more information than you would expect on the simple job of cleaning pennies. Many of these ideas work for cleaning dimes, nickels and quarters as well. I haven't tried all of these myself, so proceed at your own risk, I can't guarantee that they will work or won't damage your coins.

First, make sure you really want to clean them. If they are collectibles, you may destroy their value by cleaning them. Look it up in a coin price guide or seek the advice of someone who knows the value for truly old coins.

None of these techniques are recommended for coins that have a value greater than the face value.

You should also be aware that pennies minted since 1982 are not really copper pennies, but are actually 97.5% zinc, and only 2.5% copper. This was done because it started to take more than 1 cents worth of copper to make a copper penny. And the zinc coins are degraded more by the acidic solutions like vinegar in these techniques, so use them with care. Read more about this at Fun Facts from the US Mint

This one sounds like a potato chip recipe. The most popular solution I've found is to combine a weak acid like vinegar or lemon juice with salt for a cleaning solution, which actually forms a mild hydrochloric acid. The process includes:

One technique almost anyone can try is the pencil eraser. Simply start rubbing the penny with a clean pencil eraser. If you like this tecnique and have a lot of pennies to clean, those of us old enough to remember taking a drafting class remember the little motorized erasers that resembles a Dremel tool, and you can probably still find one at a drafting supply shop. These use a long eraser about the size of a pencil, so you can clean pennies a long time with a single eraser.

Another alternative is to use a vinyl eraser. Vinyl erasers don't contain the abrasives that can be found in typical pencil eraser so your penny stock is not as likely to be abraided.

Probably the next most common approach is the use of taco sauce for cleaning pennies. For some reason Taco Bell hot taco sauce gets mentioned the most, but others can work as well. On site this guy evaluated several types of taco sauce for cleaning pennies

There are commercial coin cleaners, but you probably need to clean a lot of coins to justify the expense. Other commercial cleaners that are popular choices include Brasso, but in general these are pretty strong cleaners and probably would not be your first choice.

I guess this works, but if you are at all concerned about the penny being damaged, this doesn't look like the best approach. Basically, you use a small tool like a Dremel tool with a wire brush attachment, and clean the penny with that. Sometimes folks recommend using a cleaner like Brasso along with the wire brush, but all in all this seems like more work and more damage than it's worth. But it's an idea. A less destructive idea is to use a soft bristled tooth brush.

This video is pretty entertaining. It's patterned after the popular show the Mythbusters, and they take a look at using the cleaner Cillit for cleaning copper pennies.