I'd just put a Tupperware container in the sink to soak, filling it with water and a drop of hand soap that is currently Winter: Gentle Foaming Hand Soap. According to the side label, its fragrances include Fresh Pine, Snowy Citrus, and White Woods. (Maybe those are other versions of their soap, because I'm not sure what White Woods smell like.)
It's one of last year's Christmas presents from Sis, from Bath and Body Works. It comes out of the spout as foam. So little of it was in that Tupperware container the you couldn't even tell. I did it mainly to have the film of the food soak away from the sides of the container. I think that the food must have contained a mystery ingredient!
After 5 minutes, I went back to fish out my 11-cent combo, to see if I could discern the dates. WELL! I most certainly COULD! The coins were SHINING! They had separated. The gunk had come off!
Take a gander at those magnificent specimens! Like I mentioned yesterday, the penny was a 1991, and the dime was a 1999. Yet they look brand-new! Sorry about the blurry quality. My hand-me-down Genius phone has issues with the flash. But at least it has a lens over its camera, unlike my last Genius hand-me-down phone, which just had a hole there.
Anyhoo...I was thrilled with how they came out! If I only knew what the secret ingredient was, I could market this on late-night infomercial. You know, for all the hordes of people picking up pennies for their own Future Pennyillionaire collections. The quest, however, might be like that of the Amazon Rain Forest cure for cancer in that Sean Connery film Medicine Man. Hopefully, I wouldn't end up with an indelible blue mark on my forehead like Lorraine Bracco.
I considered all the ingredients from the meal that had been in the Tupperware container. It was noodles, mushrooms, peas, canned chicken breast, minced garlic, and shredded parmesan cheese, with some margarine and Alfredo Sauce. I'm betting it was the garlic...
I had a dark-looking nickel in my spending coins that I buy from Hick's collections found in storage units. I put it in the solution. Shockingly, it did NOT get any cleaner.
I guess my infomercial will have to wait.
I don't think garlic works on nickles.
ReplyDeleteApparently not. But this one is now safe from vampires!
DeleteGarlic is like vinegar, good for anything that ails you and anything really nasty that needs cleaning!! Vinegar smells a bit fresher, though.
ReplyDeleteVinegar smells a bit fresher...which ain't sain' much! At least according to Genius and The Pony, when I'd get the egg dye ready every Easter.
Delete*sigh* Medicine Man. I wouldn't mind if Sean Connery was MY doctor....(daydreams for a minute)
ReplyDeleteThose coins came out beautifully shiny. So shiny I thought they'd been newly minted.
I have a coin collection from my mum who collected pre-decimal coins and the first versions of the decimal coins when we changed to dollars and cents in 1966. Sadly the entire collection is worth a big fat nothing, because mum cleaned the old coins with brass polish or something similar and over the years in their little plastic pockets they've all become badly tarnished. If only she'd left them alone, in their original condition they might be worth a few dollars now. Not many dollars, probably not even enough for a week's worth of cat food, but still...
There might be something you could find to re-clean your coins. It's a shame that cleaning them made them dirty!
DeleteI was shocked when I pulled my nasty sticky coins out of the sink and found them so shiny.
Have you tried a silver cleaner like Tarn-X?
DeleteI've tried re-cleaning them, but apparently once the original surface is tampered with, they'll just keep re-tarnishing, especially since they are in little plastic slots in an album.
ReplyDeleteI'm not too worried about them, it's not like I wanted to sell the collection, I just wanted to know if it was worth insuring. And it isn't. The coins were old when she collected them, not mint condition and unused. No rare ones in there either, but I knew that before I had them looked at.