Lemon Juice Pennies Cleaning

When you think of uses for lemon juice, pennies cleaning is probably not one of them. Your thoughts probably turn instead to lemonade or lemon meringue pie. It’s interesting to note that lemon juice is one of the best liquids you can use to restore older pennies that have the dull gray or green look that comes from copper oxide.

Lemon juice and vinegar clean pennies.

Lemon juice contains a compound that can dissolve the oxide. This compound is citric acid. The oxide forms when the copper on the penny bonds with oxygen in the air. Introducing the acid to the mix effectively breaks that bond. While the lemon juice may dissolve a small amount of the copper too, you end up with a shiny penny that looks just like new.

It doesn’t matter which type of lemon juice you use, whether it is fresh squeezed or comes out of a plastic lemon you have sitting in the refrigerator. As long as the lemon juice is real lemon juice, the citric acid will do the trick. Other citrus juices will also work, including orange and grapefruit, but they won’t leave your penny with that lemon fresh scent.

1. Pour a half cup of lemon juice into a cereal bowl. Do not add any water.
2. Drop five to 10 pennies into the juice. Don’t let the overlap.
3. Leave them in the juice for about five minutes.
4. Pull them out and rinse them with lukewarm distilled water.
5. Set each penny on a paper towel to dry.

If the pennies don’t shine after you’re done with the process, put them back in for another five minutes. The longer they soak the better the juice will work. If you want to see just how well, tape a penny to the side of the dish so that one half gets soaked and the other have stays in the open air. As long as you don’t bump the dish, you’ll end up with a penny that has one half still cloudy and oxidized while the other half looks clean.

If you have pennies that are dusty or dirty but are not oxidized, you can still use lemon juice to clean them. It is pretty effective at taking care of dirt and debris as well. However, lemon juice is more effective if you mix it with white vinegar or hot water, since it’s not particularly abrasive on dirt that is deeply ground in.

Yes, they are all worth one cent, but not all pennies are created equal. Only those minted before 1982 are. That’s because the U.S. Mint started phasing out copper coins in 1981 when the price of the copper started getting higher than the cost of the coin itself. Instead, copper pennies were replaced with zinc pennies with a thin copper coating. These pennies may not polish up as well as their copper brethren, especially if any areas of zinc are exposed. YOu don’t have to check the dates on your pennies before you begin cleaning with lemon juice, but if some just don’t have the sparkle of others, this could very likely be the culprit.

Another thing to take into accord is that lemon juice can hurt the value of old pennies you’re saving for their collector value. That’s because when it take off the copper oxide, a bit of the copper can come off with it. It won’t be enough for you to notice with the naked eye, but a buyer can see it under the microscope. If you’re saving pennies to sell later on, either leave them dirty or take them to a professional. Don’t take matters into your own hands.

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