Gregazar,
Turning found clad and Pennie’s into till-ready coinage is easy, but you need a system. Separate clad and zinc Pennie’s. Use a rotary tumbler. Clad only tumbles with chicken grit, water and a drop of Dawn. Rinse off the chicken grit and tumble again with vinegar and a media. I use the pins that come with the Lyman rotary cartridge tumbler as media. Rinse, dry and take ‘‘em to your credit union that doesn’t charge a premium to cash-in. That’s for clad. Pennies get a single tumble with vinegar and media. There is some nuance, but that’s the process.
Total time to tumble twice and dry is an afternoon. At roughly $20/pound for clad, and $1.45/pound for Pennie’s, it’s worth it to me. You’ll have to decide for yourself.
I would add pictures but this site says I lack some security thang!
Anyway, I clean coins in 5 to 8 pound lots 8 to 10 times a year. It pays for my detectors and fuel to get to my sites. The PMs are just gravy.
As for sending bad coins to the mint… I have 40+ pounds of bad Pennie’s and only a couple of pounds of bad clad. Shipping costs would make it a break even endeavor. Hardly worth the trouble..