Corpus Christi Museum of Science and History

http://www.pennycollector.com/Details.aspx?location=2058

Dry and Bagged Clean Pre-1982 Pennies

Cleaning Pennies, Part 3

I decide to give the dryer a try. I got a couple of used white tube socks, place all the clean pennies in one sock, made a knot and place that sock inside the other sock and made a know on the second sock. I placed the sock in the dryer with a load of clean wet clothes. When the dryer finished, I open the sock and empty the pennies. The inside of the sock was black but the pennies were shining clean. I place all the pennies in a ziploc bag for storage. This was a great a solution to cleaning and drying large quantity of pennies.

One thing I learned while cleaning pennies the second time, the water on the bowl was turning yellow so I decided to change the water and used warm water. Big mistake, the pennies started to tarnish after a few minutes. I had to clean them again with tarn•X. This time I used clean cold water plus a couple of ice cubes to hold the clean pennies until I was ready to put them in the dryer.

Cleaned Pre-1982 Pennies in water

Cleaning Pennies, Part 2

A couple of months ago I decided to purchase some more pennies. I went to the bank and ask the teller for $20 of pennies. She didn't have that many so she went to back and got a box of pennies and she opened to take out five dollars out. I told her that I would take to whole box instead and spend two days picking every pre-1982 penny. The next weekend I was doing laundry and decided to clean pennies while waiting for the the washing machine. I had cleaned about about 10 dollars worth of pennies. I used the Tarn•X and two different bowls with clean water. I cleaned them first with tarn•x, then rinse the pennies in the first bowl and then set the pennies the second bowl. Half way through the cleaning I put another load in the washing machine and the first load in the dryer. I return to my penny cleaning and that's when it hit me. What if I put the pennies in the dryer. I had left coins in the pockets of my pants before and found a clean coins clothes when dryer was done.

Circulated Pre-1982 Pennies

Cleaing Pennies, Part 1

I started to press pennies on our first vacation trip to San Francisco. I only did it because it was fun and it was a cheap souvenir. It never crossed my mind to search on the internet for penny machine locations.

I found a website that open my eyes to collecting press pennies. I didn't know that people actually collected the pressed pennies. The Pennycollector website listed all the places where I could find penny machines. I learned that collectors used pre-1982 pennies and this explained why some pennies showed the silver lines and others didn't. This site also listed several options for cleaning pennies.

I decided to try the lime juice. I search through all my change and collected all the pre-1982 pennies. I spent several hours cleaning and drying about 100 pennies. This was a very slow process.

The next time I went to the bank and purchased $5 dollars of pennies and decided to use Tarn•X to clean them. The Tarn•X cleaned the pennies fast, but it still took a while to dry every penny.