The Great Token Cleaning Experiment
Introduction
Ever since I was young, I tried saving a token from each arcade that I visited. More often than not, dropping my last twenty five cents into some sparkling noise making contraption was too tempting to resist. Nonetheless, I managed to scrounge up enough tokens to build a small collection. I plan on lining a picture frame with black velvet and placing my collection in it to go on display next to my upcoming Mame cabinet. (Every time I think I can't possibly geek out any further, I'm wrong.) me.Geek++ The only problem was that my 29plus year old tokens were too dirty to make an attractive display. I searched the BYOAC forums and other places on the net for a solution to my token cleaning conundrum. me.Geek++ I found tons of suggestions on what to use, but no one could really decide on what was best. Hence, a completely unscientific experiment was in order. me.Geek++
The Process
The cleaning process used 14 different cleaning agents suggested from all over the internet that I had in my house.
The steps were:
- soak the token in the agent for 10 minutes
- wipe the token down with rag
- rinse the token off with water
- dry the token to avoid rust
The Cleaning Agents
The cleaning agent: Coca-Cola
The reason: Everyone on the internet claims it is a miracle cleaning product. I've heard so much of this, I can't believe coke doesn't have its own infomercial about its wondrous cleansing properties. Hell, it can even dissolve teeth overnight (no it can't), so it must be able to clean tokens!
The cleaning agent: Diet Coke
The reason: You might as well do something with this if you have some. I'm pretty sure you won't attempt to injest it.
The cleaning agent: Lemon Juice
The reason: Lemon juice is in millions of cleaning products. This is probably because people enjoy the scent, but supposedly citric acid will break down dirt.
The cleaning agent: Lime Juice
The reason: It was in my fridge. An alternate source of citric acid couldn't hurt.
The cleaning agent: Vinegar
The reason: It can take care of even the skankiest vagina, a token should be no problem
The cleaning agent: Ketchup
The reason: I love ketchup. I hate to waste it on an experiment like this, but it could provide a reason to increase my already ample ketchup supply. Some guy's kid on the BYOAC forums seems to think cleaning coins with ketchup is more fun than a hot tub full of strippers and bacon.
The cleaning agent: Taco Bell Fire Sauce
The reason: I have heard of the power of Taco Bell Hot sauce over pennies for years now. Hot just isn't hot enough for me though. I gotta have Fire, baby. Also, you can steal lots of these and not get in trouble.
The cleaning agent: Tabasco Sauce
The reason: Someone somewhere suggested it. If the Taco Bell sauce it to be believed, whatever the active agent is in it, is probably in Tabasco.
The cleaning agent: Listerine Mouth Wash
The reason: If it can help your greasy tobacco stained little Chiclets, it should do something beneficial to a token.
The cleaning agent: Hydrogen Peroxide
The reason: This is also used teeth whitening products. Cut right to the source. Seems to wash the sense out of womens' heads. People clean jewely with it. People also claim that it tarnishes jewelry. People are stupid.
The cleaning agent: Kaboom
The reason: "Tough on Grime, Easy on You." You can get two of these for $19.99 from the infomercial. I got this for a buck at the dollar store.
The cleaning agent: Beer
The reason: Already had one (ok a few) open at the time. This was required to get this experiment started in the first place. I didn't want to waste a sip of my precious beverage, but the combination of pouring some for my homies and token science created an acceptable sacrifice. Beer can clean your hair, jewelry, furniture and carpets. Whatever. So can spit.
The cleaning agent: Whiskey
The reason: It can wash away my consciousness, maybe it can wash away tarnish and grubby finger scum?
The cleaning agent: Brass Cleaner
The reason: You're a retard
Ready, Set, Go
Results and Conclusions
|
Rank
|
Product
|
Rating
|
Comments |
|
14
|
Whiskey | [-1/10] | The token is actually dirtier now. Whiskey should be combined with blues music and/or coke, not tokens. |
|
13
|
Tobasco | [-1/10] | The token was a lot cleaner, but it was stained pink! |
|
12
|
Beer | [-0/10] | Beer goes in your mouth, stupid. |
|
11
|
Listerine | [1/10] | Not much of an effect at all. Clean your teeth with this, not tokens. Spit or swallow it, I don't care. |
|
10
|
Hydrogen Peroxide | [1/10] | Doesn't clean tokens. Probably doesn't clean jewelry. Probably tarnishes jewelry. |
|
9
|
Ketchup | [3/10] | Disappointing. Had very little effect on the token. Definitely not more fun than a hot tub full of strippers and bacon. Who am I to judge though, live how you wanna live, weird BYOAC forums kid. |
|
8
|
Vinegar | [3/10] | Meh |
|
7
|
Diet Coke | [4/10] | Someone will find a use for this stuff someday |
|
6
|
Coke | [4/10] | Better than nothing, I guess |
|
5
|
Lime | [4/10] | See previous entry |
|
4
|
Lemon | [4/10] | See previous entry |
|
3
|
Kaboom | [7/10] | Cheap and effective. This was a huge step up from all other cleaning agents. I would think that pouring fifty cents worth in a bucket of tokens, stirring then rinsing and drying them would be the best way to clean a large volume of tokens |
| 2 | Taco Bell Fire Sauce | [8.5/10] | It's no wonder that all restaurants in the future will be called Taco Bell. A big improvement over Kaboom. |
|
1
|
Brass Cleaner | [10/10] | Obviously. There is a tool for every job. Make your life easier and use it you cheap bastard. It's worth the four bucks. This would be best with small amounts of tokens. For example if you want to display your dorky collection to the friends that you don't have. Use caution, you really need to wipe off each individual token or you could damage them. |
| 0 | Whiskey and Coke | [10/10] |
I decided to clean my insides with this combination and would highly recommend it. Quickly washes away the sorrows gained upon realizing that: I would have scored this higher than a 10, but you can't give 110%. That's just stupid. |
Tokens before (it looks as if my camera has been drinking as well)
Tokens after
This is what you get when you add one drop of brass cleaner and wipe it once with a rag.
Hah nice. That's actually pretty funny if you take the time to read any of it.
This information must be shared with the world.
Vinegar and salt works better than the hot sauce. Supposed to be the two ingredients in the hot sauce that make it work anyways.
After testing, I think that vinegar and salt is a horrible idea. The tokens weren't very clean and a lot of them picked up a green crust if they weren't washed off well enough afterward. Rubbing the tokens with Kaboom or brass cleaner took off tons of scum that the salt and vinegar didn't. The paper towel I used was black after I recleaned the tokens.
Brilliant! Loved it!
you should write facts on all the condimians you used
you should clean with jellybeans cuz they r my fav
Whilst trawling the internet to find absolute rubbish on a monday morning, bored at work already, I found this. This man is a comedy genius and obviously doesn't know it. Keep up the good work...
You would get different results with glass containers. Some of the solutions you used brings out various peroxides from the plastic cups which dulls down the tokens.