I know that in general terms you should never clean coins. But was curious if cleaning my wheat pennies that mostly look like crap anyhow would mess them up or ruin any of there be it small value?
There are many schools of thought on cleaning. However, I would recommend NOT cleaning anything until you (a) decide if cleaning your coins will ultimately fulfill your goal in doing so - making them look nicer, it seems - without having to exchange that for anything bad that could happen - reduction of value, ruining / damaging the coin, etc. etc., and (b) properly learn how to do it. There are proper ways to clean and improper ways to clean. I don't really collect cents or now the proper ways to clean bronze alloys, so I can't be of much help there. Just make sure you educate yourself fully before taking a wire brush to your 1909 S VDB (kidding).
Don't clean them. However, if you would like to know what coins look like after some forms of cleaning then by all means clean circulated and uncirculated Memorial cents and keep them for a while. Then simply spend them.
Lol. Thanks urban. Yea anything that has any significant falue I wouldn't mess with. And I like your wire brush idea that should damage anything should it ;-)
At most just some dish soap and water for me to get the heavy grime off. Of course only on circulated coins
I have tried cleaning wheat pennies and for some reason I have destroyed every one of them. I tried dipping in salt+vinegar. That works great for a more modern penny that is just a little dull and toned looking. But really old pennies just seem to turn black and look worse than they started with. I left one in the solution recently for a week and it eventually turned copper-looking again but the surface looked like sandpaper instead of being shiny like I wanted. I've also tried scrubbing with baking soda, toothpaste, etc.. Nothing seems to work. I think once they get to the point that they're nearly black I think there is no hope for them ever being shiny again. Now, with silver coins I've had fantastic luck bringing nasty black looking coins back to life!
