Found first coin!!-How do I clean it?

earthvirgo10

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May 10, 2019
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Caifornia!
WOOHOOO i found my first coin today.(5/11/19)and i was wondering how to clean it. It looks to be a modern day penny not a wheatie (sadly) a pic is attached.:D
 

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congratulations on your first coin. Pretty soon it will be silver coins. Then it will be gold coins . Bucket-listers will fly by. Before you know it: Any gold coin newer than 1900 will bore you to tears. :laughing:

And .... seeing as how you are from CA, you know the forum rules: 30% of all your finds go to me . As for how to clean that corroded zinc : Someone will come along with sage advice I'm sure.
 
Congrats on your first find ! It would be a good candidate to start for a test garden with. dig a hole, place your find it in it and then familiarize your new hobby with the scanning of the coin in the ground with your metal detector. Good luck and many more finds in the future.
 
Put the coins in a jar of white vinegar and shake. That cleans them up but don’t do that to old ones. It seems to take the silver color off clad nickels, dimes, quarters etc. But with clad stuff it cleans them and I don’t care what color the clad stuff is. Again, I wouldn’t do that to valuable coins and I’m looking for a way to clean the good stuff up without damaging them.

As far as jewelry try a toothbrush and toothpaste or pony up the couple bucks for jewelry cleaner.
 
Nice work on your first coin!

Save it "as is". It has centimental value as a first find. Pretty soon you won't even bother bringing those crusty, corroded pennies home!
 
Congrats on your first coin !

(You could always wait till you got some more crusty Zincolns and redeem them in a Coinstar machine for a fee-free Amazon gift card :lol:)
 
I dig lots of those. Most of them are worthless and will never clean up so in the circular file they go.
 
WOOHOOO i found my first coin today.(5/11/19)and i was wondering how to clean it. It looks to be a modern day penny not a wheatie (sadly) a pic is attached.:D

Congrats on your first coin. It is 1982-2008 memorial. Your first Zincoln. You can clean it a bit with a brass brush if you like. That will let you confirm the date. I would only do this on crusty Zicolns. What detector do you use?...you will get better and find more and more as you go. Again, congrats on your first coin!
 
Unfortunately that coin looks like a zinc memorial coin. Tgose are usually pretty toast. Once you start finding copper pennies and silver colored coins, I would invest in a rock tumbler. I use a handful of aquarium gravel, lemon juice and water. Add a drop of dish soap and tumble them flr an hour or so. They come out super clean. Copper pennies for some reason always come out looking brand new. Hobby lobby sells a decent starter tumbler for 40 bucks or so and I've used mine a lot with np issues.
 
Also, don't put old silver coins or any other coins that may be valuable in the rock tumbler lol. But for clad you plan to spend or put through a coin counter, a rock tumbler cleans them up nice and shiny.
 
... Hobby lobby sells a decent starter tumbler for 40 bucks or so and I've used mine a lot with no issues.
I'm new to detecting and not very good at it.

So far in three outings I have withdrawn 10 pennies, a nickel, and a dime from the Earth Reserve Bank.

A rock tumbler would be fun to have, but its going to be a long time before I will have enough clad to make it worthwhile. :money:
 
I'm new to detecting and not very good at it.

So far in three outings I have withdrawn 10 pennies, a nickel, and a dime from the Earth Reserve Bank.

A rock tumbler would be fun to have, but its going to be a long time before I will have enough clad to make it worthwhile. :money:

You're already doing better than my first outings haha. You'll get there just keep at it. We keep all our clad in jars so we can actually see how far we've come. I think it was you who posted a question about your bounty Hunter on the orher thread right? I put step by step set up directions on there that should help you out a bunch. If it wasn't you, go give it a read. Just keep swinging and before you know it you'll know that machine like the back of your hand
 
If thats a memorial cent or "zincoln" youre not gonna clean it, too far gone, not worth the trouble. :lol:

It may not be worth the monetary trouble to clean it...not worth the one cent..


BUT....keep it as a "memorial" to your first find. It's certainly worth keeping and displaying.
 
Throw that away and get back out there to dig something worthwhile. If you're going to try to clean a penny, at least make it a wheat cent. If you stick with the hobby, you'll dig a hundred of those nasty things.
The only good suggestion was to use it in a test garden, that way you'll save yourself the aggravation of digging so many those crumbly ole things.
Don't fret, you'll soon be digging worthwhile coinage.
 
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