We contain all been there. You're cleaning out some cellar or old closet, and you stagger on a bag of mouldy old coins. They stink badly and they look revolting. But they are still money, but you would like to acquire them in a little better shape. What should you have to be done?
First, the most excellent thing is to step back and make sure you want to do something at all. Some of those old coins can be quite precious, and onslaught them will diminish them as much as 90&. They like caring that old patina in place. So take the time to look at them enough to recognize them, and then use a coin guide or take them to a coin dealer to make sure that you don't have the family heirlooms in the bag.
If you have strong-minded the coins are simply old, and not precious, then your can move on to actually cleaning the coins. If you seem around the web, you can find a whole host of ideas on how to clean a copper penny. But ensure you are cleaning a copper penny. Since 1982, pennies have been mint with 97.5 % zinc and only 2.5 % copper. This was done as the price of copper reserved climbing, and it was not going to be long until the copper content of a penny was worth more than the face value of the penny.
But zinc reacts in a dissimilar way than copper to some of the well-liked cleaning approaches to cleaning pennies, and in this case another way means that it will degrade more quickly, so any solution using acids or other reactive agents would best not be used on the newer pennies.
There are an entire host of ideas on cleaning pennies. Some ideas include:
Rubbing them spotless with pencil erasers
Mixing a solution of vinegar and salt and drenched them
Using taco cheek as a cleaning agent
Using a brass cleaner such as Brasses
Using a wire brush with a small tool like a dermal tool
Now some of these ideas will work much superior than others. But others are in fact uncooperative to the coins, reducing the coins value...