coin cleaning--I want them shiny :)

I'm going to be getting a few coins that I will be using in a board game.
Some are going to be east carribean 1 cent coins (not sure of the composition, but they are silver in color.), and the others will be chinese 5 jiao coins (brass or brass plated I belive).

All the coins will be modern (2000 or so) and worth only the face value.
I only want to use them for a board game, I dont care about the value since it will be minimal. So I want to make them nice and shiny. My question is, any ideas on how to clean the coins? Most of the pages that turn up when I google just say "dont clean the coins, it destroys the value." However, I just want them shiny, and they are all low value modern coins.

Any suggestions?

 

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Ok. I think it would be faster if you can buy those in UNC grades. For the most ultimate destructive weapon, you should get brasso, a powerful metal cleaner, but watch out what it does to the brass coins as it seems to strip the goldish color.

Alternatively, if you want to be a cheapo, I hear using a used toothbrush and toothpaste would do a smililar effect, that is if you don't mind putting the effort.

I think others will have their own opinions too.

 

pollish

Try wenol metal pollish, you can find it in some auto parts stores. It works great with very little effort.

 

Simple. Just go to Walmart, Kmart, Target, etc and go to the jewelry department. Buy a jar of jewel cleaner or Tarn-X. Dip the coins in there for a while and presto, cleaned and shinny. The nice part of doing this is you still have the cleaner with a dipping basket inside to use for rings, bracelets and real jewelry.
There are many other ways such as just placing the coins in concentrated Lemon or Lime juice, wash with baking soda and water solution, most acid type drinks such as Mountain Dew or just Coca Cola. However, my favorite is battery acid. Now that kind of depends on the availability of an auto battery that has openable ports. Many nowadays are sealed since they do not contain an acid that emits Hydrogen gas when charged. If there is none with openable ports in your family, try checking out the batteries of friends, neighbors or reletives. If none of them have them, try a garage or gas station and ask if they have an old battery you could borrow some acid out of. If all that fails, some Sears auto sections actually sell the stuff.
It's a little unsanitary but note that spit is somewhat caustic and will also act as a cleaning agent. Then there is Lacquer thinner, but that will leave a whitish residue that must be claned off by further dipping in something like alcohol. If you use a drinking type alcohol, you can drink the finished product.

 

Taco Bell fire sauce.

And no....I'm not kidding.

 

I don't know about Mountain Dew, but if you use Coke, make sure you don't leave the coins in it too long or instead of being shiny metal they will be corroded.

I haven't had a Coke since 1947 when my high school chemistry teacher dissolved a rusty bolt, and cooked a piece of meat, in the stuff. :eating:

 

So far I'm inclined to try the toothpaste. I have some normal toothpaste and some baking soda toothpaste, does it matter which one I use?

And quite a lot more expensive too. This is to replace cardboard tokens in a $25 board game.

Wow.

Dissolved a bolt? Not just cleaned it? And how was the meat cooked? Dropped in and taken out next day and it was cooked?

Thats pretty impressive.

I knew the acid in some carbonated drinks was pretty strong, but thats beyond pretty strong heh.

 

If memory serves (and it doesn't always ) a small bolt disappeared in a week or so. The cooking took place within one class session, and I think it was about 10 minutes, but no guarantees.

 

To give you a serious answer,and bear in mind that you should ONLY do this with coins that have little or no value,buy some Hagerty silver spray in the big blue can and spray some on the softest cloth you can find.Then place the cloth on a hard surface and rub back and forth,repeating until the wet spot becomes black.keep doing this ,using a lot of pressure,changing the area on the cloth and spraying more cleaner on occasionally.This stuff contains jeweler's rouge which is what they use to polish metals used for fine jewelry.After about 10 minutes of this per side,your coin will be shinier than you can imagine.This will totally ruin the value of any coin but it will do the trick better than any other metal polish including Maas or Wenol.The only drawback is that they will re-tarnish after about 6 months so you will have to touch up the job from time to time.

 

OK,because I love you guys,I've sacrificed a perfectly good 1952 Jefferson UNC nickel to show you this.I know some of you with weaker stomachs will cringe in horror so I'm rating this post PG-13WS.These are two nickels that looked identical before Dr. frankenstein went to work on them so here goes.
nOObie,this should be just right for your game tokens...ready?

 

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Holy crap wow dude.

Heh, I never expected anyone to go and kill off a coin to show me how it looks. But DANG thats specacularly shiny.

I need look no further

:bow:

Once I get the tokens and clean them up, I think some return pics are in order.

 

Coke has carbonic acid, phosphoric acid, etc. which I guess reduces the Iron oxide, and I have a feeling your teacher didn't cook a tbone, but rather dissolved it. I talked to a representative for coke (I'm a food science student, so they come here to try and recruit us), and he told me that many emergency crews carry a large bucket of coca cola to remove blood from asphalt after a crime scene.

 

I also heard something about pour some coke in the sink when your pipes are obstructed. I never thought to do so with my coins before so I'll follow your advice

 

Coke has so many uses, it should be placed next to duct tape in the hardware isle.

I've used it to clean: battery terminals, my car engine, blood in my football helmet (nasty, nasty cut), coins, and even dissolving bolts. It's pretty cool to try the bolt thing.

I don't drink coke, Pepsi and Dr. Pepper for me.

Anyone see the Mythbusters show on Coke? Now that was interesting!

 

I like Mikjo0's method the best. The only thing I would add to that is to spray them with a clear laquer after that to have the results stay that way.
When I was a kid my Dad owned a gas station. It was in a large trucking area so one of the things he got involved in was fixing truck flat tires. There is a large metal rim that helps hold that thing together and he used to pour Coke on this to free up the tire and metal rims. It only took a little while and they would break loose quickly.
I truely doubt that anyone would carry Coke with them to a crime scene to remove blood since there are so many more practical and economical products available. The Coke rep had a sence of humor. Same is true for putting it into a sinck to clear out blockages. It appears that just about all chem classes have the experiment to show the acidic properties of soft drinks. However, when we did it we tried different metals for the bolts and the soft bolts made of annealed iron only partially dissolved. Bolts made of high grades of Stainless steel, such as 440 or higher were hardly effected at all. The chem teacher should have explained that. We would have used the meat method but thought cooking it would be more advantageous to our experimenting on weight additions to the human body.
Oops. Forgot. True Mountain Dew is the one with all the caffien, not high in acid.

 

Actually Carl,the surprising thing is that after putting such a high polish on a coin,it seems to prevent tarnishing for extremely long periods of time.You would think it might be just the opposite since you're essentially putting a new,unprotected layer of metal out there for the elements to munch on.In fact it serves to seal up the surface by not providing little nooks and crannies for oxidation to take hold.The clear laquer might just wear off and get ugly if he's going to be using them as game board tokens.Maybe Coke would clean it off?

 

Yeah, I'm not going to laquer them, we will be handling them in the game. I just wanted something that would look reasonably decent, and would clink when we handled them (I didn't want to get plastic fake coins).

Besides, I'll have this giant bottle of leftover big blue shiny coin killer spray that I wont have used on anything else

The game is called puerto rico, its one of the top rated board games.

This is the picture that inspired me:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/105997
Another guy did the same thing with a slightly differant coin selection.

 

One more, hopefully last, idea is if there is a factory in your area that produces washers, nuts, bolts, etc. you may want to check with them for any washers or blank slugs of high polished 440 Stainless Steel. Then you could acquire a variety of sizes and shapes. If your a kid, most such factories would give them to you free.

 

For the game you mean? Yeah if nothing else comes along. But I think it would be much cooler to have real stamped coins