LCS owner prefers VINEGAR over acetone for PVC residue?!?!

Most of these are zinc. No foam.
MD finds which I would just rinse off. Then I tried toothpaste which worked a little. And then I remembered the lemon juice and salt soak.

 

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Not too sure what "no foam" means in this context, but you are aware, aren't you, that toothpaste is like commercial metal polish ("Brasso", etc.)? It's similarly full of a very fine-ground, but very "hard" abrasive. Usually diatomaceous earth or some similar product consisting of the finely-ground fossilized shells of tiny ancient aquatic life-forms. More modern formulations of toothpaste may use microbeads of hard plastic for the abrasive. Still, it is going to result in mechanical degradation of the surfaces it's used on. Plus, the microbeads are now being recognized as a very nasty thing to be releasing into the environment at large in toothbrushing population-sized quantities.
If you're mixing salt with vinegar in any quantity, be sure to do it outdoors or in a very well ventilated place - the combination produces a poisonous gas. In the quantities you would most likely use on coins, it shouldn't be a problem, but if you make enough to use it to revive the shine on a large brass item - like a bedframe, for example - you definitely don't want to be breathing the fumes in a closed, unventilated space.
If you can get over (get past, whatever) the expectation that "coins are shiny, shiny is good - ooh, I like shiny!" you may be able to develop an appreciation for the galaxy of various forms of toning and patina which will eventually, almost inevitably develop on virtually any reactive metal surface.
I'm not any sort of expert about the modern copper-plated zinc cents, but as I understand it, 1982-onward cents tend to continue to look "new" for a period far longer than they normally would due to a very tough, very thin resin (plastic) coating applied to the copper, each of which layers (both copper and the resin coating) is not much more than a few molecules thick.

 

Very familiar with toothpaste and I use it on face value coins that I have dug up.
The no foam is in reply to an earlier poster who thought the lemon juice and salt on the zincolns would foam up.
I never mentioned anything about salt and vinegar.

 

As long as it's only on coins that are already ruined, because it will ruin them further.

In this context, lemon juice and vinegar serve the same function; they're dilute acids. Mixed with salt, they form hydrochloric acid.

 

I don't think so. Are you thinking about vinegar and bleach, maybe?

 

Bleach and ammonia will be a non-user also.

 

Sounds like we are forming a CoinTalk's J. Sanford Saltus Society Branch.

 

Sorry for any confusion I may have inadvertently raised. The combination of salt and vinegar was mentioned in someone's post further upthread, and the advice about toxic fumes may, ultimately, turn out to have been be apocryphal, but it was the common wisdom in the antique/used furniture dealer/trader community several decades ago when we actually occasionally used to need to polish-up large brass items like ornate headboards.

 

Well, if salt and vinegar did produce toxic fumes, I'm pretty sure I'd have died of ketchup exposure sometime in my teens.

 

Death by Catsup.........Title of my upcoming book!

 

I'm sure that tomato based products might have some sort of impact on coins. MILD acid with some salt might be good for heavily encrusted ancient coins, for example??

 

One trick I learned during the years I lived in Japan is to put a cap full of vinegar in the rice cooker when making rice. It keeps the inside of the pot from tarnishing and will also break down any tarnishing that is already there. I guess it would do the same for coins.

 

Death by Catsup? When I was in the Navy, catsup made the difference between tasty chow and a terrible tasting chow. If I saw catsup bottles in the galley on my way through, I'd definitely stop to get something to eat. And wouldn't you know it. Every once in a while some joker would fill half empty catsup bottles full with tabasco sauce. Yuck! Maybe they got that habit from cleaning coins with the two.

 

That's embarrassing...

What I meant is:
1) In terms of corrosive effects from an acid, vinegar is a much weaker acid than sulfuric acid. We would expect the effects from vinegar exposure to be less corrosive than an identical time exposure to H2SO4 (all other factors equal). The thiourea helps remove the tarnish, but my comment was meant in terms of corrosive effects. Thiourea, to my knowledge, doesn't lessen the corrosive effects of H2SO4.

2) That was an egregious typo on my part. I meant acid would be more detrimental than acetone which is inert. As written it makes no sense - sorry for that.

3) Yes, I was in artful in my phrasing.

 

Agreed. If ordinary table salt and vinegar were a lethal combination, pickle juice would kill you when you opened the jar.

I have heard people warn about against using cyanide salts (as used to be commonly done to copper) in the presence of a strong acid as it could give off HCN (a lethal gas). This is actually how the gas chamber worked in the states that used it. I'd avoid cyanide compounds all together.

 

Salt and vinegar chips have been a great weakness for years

 

A strong solution of bleach and ammonia will make you elegable for the Darwin awards

 

Help me here. Vineger is a no no right?

 

Think you might want to visit him again and save our hobby