How to Clean Silver and Gold Jewelry with Simple Shine [VIDEO]

Video Transcription

Today's video is sponsored by Simple Shine and also in paid affiliation with amazon.com.

What's up YouTube, Thrift Hunter here. Today we're going to talk about cleaning jewelry, and we are going to test out some of this Simple Shine jewelry cleaning products and we're going to talk about what jewelry to clean, how to clean it, what product to use and we're going to just bring out a whole bunch of tarnished jewelry that I need to clean and we're going to see how these jewelry products do, and so let's go ahead and get started. Okay. So we're going to start off with their complete silver jewelry care kit and we're going to see how it does on this tarnished ball bead necklace that is sterling silver. You can see that these are fairly tarnished. There's a lot of black [inaudible 00:00:48] on them. So there's our tarnished beads there. We've also got just a microfiber cloth to dry it and just a little Tupperware with some lukewarm water and a little bit of soap, literally just one drop of soap. We're going to use that to rinse afterwards.

All right. So we're going to go ahead and test out this jewelry cleaner, and the instructions say to leave it in for one minute. So we're going to definitely do that. We're going to start it off with a section here just to kind of get a comparison. Also this is how much will fit at a time into this cleaning bottle. So we're going to go ahead and dip this piece in and we're going to let that hang out for about a minute and we'll come right back and see how that section's looking compared to the rest. All right, so we've been in the solution here for about a minute and we're going to go ahead and pull it out and then put it into our cleaning cloth, and I actually read the directions which say that the inside is going to be your silver tarnish remover and cleaner, and then the outside is going to be kind of your microfiber polishing part. So we're going to start with the inside here. So we're going to go ahead and pull this out and we're going to see kind of how it's looking right now. I'm going to let it drain off because there is a chain and kind of a some hollow parts on the inside where the cleaner is. So we're going to shake that off.

So first impressions of it, it definitely is a lot shinier on the portions here. So let's see if we can see the difference. So here's your uncleaned part here and your cleaned part here. Definitely a lot more of that silver color coming through. I wouldn't say all of the tarnish has come off compared to other cleaners I've used before with something extremely tarnished like this. This is actually a very, very good result of how much it's removed just in the first pass. With other cleaners, same thing. I've had to dip it again before, but let's see how this little polishing cloth does on this. So only the section maybe to here has been cleaned so far. That's just what will fit in the jar for this large piece, but I think hopefully the camera's picking it up and you can see that there's definitely some more shine, more silver, and we've got a darker grayer color here, but let's see how this polishing cloth does. The rep told me that this is something that a lot of their clients love is this polishing cloth.

So let's just give this a little bit of some elbow grease. Definitely with any cleaner that I've used before, you're going to need a little bit of elbow grease to clean these up. One thing that's nice so far that I definitely like about this cleaner is it doesn't smell. It doesn't have a particularly strong odor to it. Where other ones I've used smell just like rotten eggs kind of in this one actually just doesn't really have much of any smell at all. So far you can see the cloth is definitely taking off a lot of tarnish here on the beads. We're going to go ahead and keep going. Yeah, that's looking really nice in comparison to the darker beads. You can see the tarnished versus the partially cleaned here. Nice you can see even underneath, the chain has gotten really nice and cleaned up too. So we're going to start kind of finishing this piece and cleaning up the rest of it and we'll kind of show you kind of after once I've done some more polishing, and again, that took a minute and 20 seconds or something to get from this dark tarnish to this nice almost disco ball reflection here. So I'm going to clean up some more of the sections. We're going to dip those each for a minute and then do a little bit of polishing with this polishing cloth and we'll be right back.

Okay guys, here is the finished product after a little bit of polishing with the Simple Shine complete silver jewelry care kit. Definitely impressed with how it came out. I think the shine on it is really, really nice. This is definitely a showroom quality polish on this piece. So a couple of things that I noticed was, first of all, I noticed the polishing cloth. I think that was the one that stood out the most to me, and it's something that they kind of told me that I would like and I did. I liked it a lot. So here's the the polishing cloth and here's what it looks like after some polishing. This is their travel size polishing cloth. They also sent me the full size polishing cloth and I would definitely recommend this polishing cloth, and if you're going to try out the silver kit, definitely go with the kit versus just the solution. I think the solution ... I really do like it. There's many good qualities about it. First of all, it has no smell. I really liked that because the other one that I use has a rotten egg type of smell, so it's a really good cleaner. I would say for this piece in particular it was a little bit of a hassle with the size of the jar, so I had to do it in sections.

I would definitely pour this out and maybe into a different container. For a large necklace like this. This would be perfect for rings, earrings, bracelets, no problem. I think for a large necklace like this, I would still be able to use it, but I would pour it out into a container that could handle this. It wasn't too bad. I mean I just had to do it in sections. With the solution itself, I think it did a great job of removing the tarnish. It definitely gave a nice shine to it. This is the main thing that I like about this silver cleaner. Other ones I've used in the past leaves kind of like a grayish tone to the silver that needs to be polished out afterwards. So this one didn't do that. It just brought up the shine immediately without a bunch of this gray film that happens on other cleaners. I would say the tarnish removing capabilities of this could use a little bit of help. I think it didn't remove like a ton of the tarnish right away like I would hope.

Again, I said in the beginning that this is a heavily tarnished piece and even with other cleaners I have to do it multiple times and that was kind of the same case with this where it just took a couple of dips to really get it to the level that I wanted, but the polishing cloth was a nice surprise. I really liked this and how well it did. We can take a look at the piece here and hopefully my camera will pick it up, but this did a really, really good job at the amount of shine. I mean you can see the reflection of me in the beads here now and it was really easy to get into some of the more ... the cracks around where the two beads meet there is where a large lot of the tarnish tends to form, and hopefully it's showing up on ... maybe not so well up on the white about how much polish I got on this, really just ... I mean showroom quality. So now we're going to try out these silver wipes. I've never used them before, any wipes, and we're going to test it out on this piece of hollowware. The reason why I've chosen this piece of hollowware is a has a cement filled base.

This is a silver weighted piece and you can't use a liquid cleaner on something like this, because the liquid would soak into the cement and could possibly cause it to crack and get a little bit weird. So we're going to try out this silver cleaning wipe and see how it does on this piece of hollowware, and hopefully the camera can pick it up that this is all tarnished here. It's tarnished all around the base. The inside here is all tarnished. I wouldn't call this super really bad, because it's not as old. It's not like an antique piece, but it does have quite a bit of tarnish as something this would have, how it would look in your household. It's just getting a little bit dull, it's time to clean it, give it a polish. It also has some detail here around the edge. So we're going to see how well we can clean up this detail. I may end up using the silver brush and see how that works on the detailed part. We're going to check this out as well, but let's go ahead and open up this jar of wipes.

Okay, so we've got one of the wipes here and we're going to see how it does on the inside of this piece of hollowware. Okay, so far it's working very nicely. It's starting to soap up a little bit. Hopefully the camera's picking that all up, and this is a fairly simple process. I mean so far I'm really liking these wipes. It's very easy and this is perfect for this specifically, this type of piece, also your silverware, your silver flatware or anything like that. It's going to clean up really nice. Now we're just going to make sure we're getting all the little crevices, any little tougher spots, make sure we wipe those down good and just make sure everything's covered. We're going to grab ... here's the wipe, looking nice and black from the tarnish. I'm going to take just a microfiber cloth here and clean that up. Hopefully my camera's picking it up. I think it is. Look at the shine that we've got on that from 10 seconds. Very nice. So we're just going to continue with the base here and the underside I'm going to clean as well, and then we'll come back and check out the detailed part as well.

We're almost finished up here. I'm just going to wipe it down with the large polishing cloth. Oh wow. Look at this. This is nice. This is a nice big polishing cloth. This is their full size one. Guys, if you want one of these, check out my link in the description below. You should get one of these. They're very reasonably priced and they work really good. I mean I love the little travel size one and this one is a huge size one and yeah, this worked so well, just this little one, that this is an awesome piece here. So let's just wipe it up. I'm going to wipe up the just the residue off of here, just kind of the soapy mixture. Hopefully you can see that getting nice and clean. Polish up the underside. This is like a compote, I guess you would call it. You'd put your fruits in here. You can put nuts in here, candies in here, anything like that, and what's nice about having this is if I missed a little spot, I can just flip it over to the polishing side and clean up those little spots, get those cleaned. We're just going to wipe the rest of this down, make sure we get the base cleaned up.

And there you have it. Look at that piece. All right, so that's looking nice, nice and cleaned up. Give it one more wipe around the inside here. So now I'm going to check out the brush, which I've never used before either. So I'm not sure how this is going to look, but it's premium horse hair brush. I was really interested in these because I do a lot of detail work. So let's check them out. Here's one brush here and here's another brush. Hopefully ... let me lay these out. So these are some really nice brushes, and I think I really like the small one here. I think this was going to be a really great piece for rings and stones and for just little detailed work. So we're going to just see if we can clean up some of the, the crevices here on the top and see kind of how this brush cleans out. So I'm just starting without any kind of a cleaner at the moment just to try and get out any dust or dirt that's been in there from the years of this sitting.

But so far just on the feeling of the brush, I really like that. So we're going to take some of our cleaner and I'm going to use the silver cleaner. I'm not going to use the gentle cleaner just yet. I'm going to save that one for another piece, but I'm going to dip it in this silver cleaner. I don't even know if you're supposed to do this, but this is how I'm going to give it a go and we're just going to clean some of this. Let me zoom in. Hopefully my camera's picking that up, but that is nice. These brushes feel a lot better than any kind of a paintbrush or anything I've ever used, definitely better than a toothbrush that I might use for something like this, just because it feels soft but kind of a medium softness, and the bristles aren't fraying away or being weird. So this is doing great job at cleaning this border here, and this brush is actually a perfect size for this little edge that I'm doing. I'm going to use this silver cleaner again. Again, I don't know if you could use the gentle cleaner, but for this particular piece, this silver cleaner is going to be just fine, just leaving it on there for a little bit.

It needs to soak about a minute to start removing any tarnish and giving it a polish, but this is looking nice and the excess is kind of just staying here in the bottom. I can kind of pick it up, the excess, and keep going around the edge here. All right, so that's looking really nice with the brush there. I'm going to move this so I don't dump it over, and then we're going to go back to ... I'm going to use the travel one again for this because it's just a detailed work, but we're going to use the other side to just kind of mop up excess cleaner and use it to clean this piece and I'm going to use the cleaning side just to give the top edge a little buff, if you will. That's doing a nice job. Okay. I'm me to go back to our big one, I think, just to mop up the rest of this and give it a nice shine.

Now this one ... what I'm doing here with this kind of rubbing motion is okay for this piece because it's a very heavily cast piece, I guess. It wouldn't be the best to use on something really antique with a fine engraving because you would lose some detail, and I'm going to lose a tiny bit of detail on here over the years of polishing this thing, but just to give it a nice ... I'm not pressing hard at all, just to give it a little bit of a nice edge here to make it kind of have some more life again, and you can see the tarnish coming up off of it, and we're just getting clean up inside, but there you go. I mean that piece is done and that really didn't take a long time at all, and it's clean all the way around, both sides, the edge, the detail's been cleaned up.

I mean that's looking really, really good, and that can just ... that's perfect. That's ready to go for your center piece. So I would definitely recommend the brushes. These brushes are awesome. I really like the quality. I mean this is all wood here. It's got horse hair, and we've got the large one, which we didn't use on this piece, but I could definitely see this on a tea pot, getting around the inside of a teapot, getting some larger pieces cleaned up, like if you have a serving tray or something like that, using this nice big brush to clean those up, but I really liked the detail brush, and this is the kit. It comes with both brushes and it's a very, very reasonable price. A lot of this stuff is, I found, very inexpensive. So check out the link in the description below if you want to try out the brushes, and definitely pick yourself up some of these cleaning cloths while you're there.

So the last product we're going to try out today is going to be the Simple Shine gentle jewelry cleaner. So this is their regular jewelry cleaning solution, and it's also got the little tray in there and this nice little brush that we'll be using to get some of the detail. So I think the best choice, the obvious choice for this kind of thing is going to be rings, earrings, anything with stones in it that you want a nice, gentle clean to it, where you don't want to harm the stones and you don't want to mess up with any of the detail. I picked a few pieces that were pretty dirty. We're going to go with this platinum and diamond cuff links that I have. They're not in bad shape, but I did notice when I looked at the back of these, if it'll focus, the back inside the diamonds here is pretty dirty. There's definitely some buildup of some dirt and dust and grime and whatever else in the back of these. So we're going to use this jewelry solution to clean those up, and then I've got a Judith Ripka piece here that was really dirty. Hopefully the camera will focus on it.

So I've got this Judith Ripka piece that's just really dirty around the charm here that you can see, and then just the silver's a bit tarnished, but this has got a whole bunch of grime on it and then this is the matching other ring that's also a bit dirty that I want to clean up both of these so I can get them ready to be listed, and then I've got another kind of CZ band ring that's also very dirty. This jewelry cleaner's going to be the best for year every day stone cleaning, and then I've also got this antique 14 karat gold band that I'm going to clean, and I talked about how, especially with antique pieces like this, you really want to go with a gentle type of cleaning solution and be very gentle with the polishing cloth, because you really don't want to lose any of the detail in there. So we're going to go ahead and drop everything into the solution here. So everything's going to go on in to the jewelry cleaning solution.

You're going to grab the little tray in here and the brush I'm going to take it out, and we're just going to dip this in here, let it do its thing, and then we're just going to take this small little brush on something like this gold ring, and we're just lightly start to brush it, making sure you're getting in to all of those little details on here, and I can tell right away that it's starting to brighten up, and this kind of cleaning on something like this is not going to damage it at all. There's really ... it's different from the maybe the silver solution where it's going to remove a thin layer off the top of it to get that tarnish off. This is just straight cleaning. This is not really any kind of polishing, per se, or any kind of tarnish removal, per se. It's more of just getting oils off of it, getting the dirt and grime off and out of the detailed spots. So we're going to leave that one there. Let's take out that Judith Rikpa piece, because this one really needs a deep cleaning, especially around this charm. That's going another take off all that stuff.

Yeah, that's all coming off nicely, all that grime that was on there. We're going to set that one down. Here's our platinum and diamond cuff links, just to show you that even something really expensive and nice like this, diamonds, platinum, this is what this jewelry cleaning solution is meant for, and you really want to get in to the back side of these cuff links, because that's where they're going to collect a lot of that dirt and dust. So we're going to go ahead and finish cleaning this up and I'll be back to show you what it looks like. We've cleaned up these pieces and I've got to say I'm very impressed with how these came out. One of the ones here I was very happy with, this is that antique gold ring. Let's see if I can focus in on it. Look at how this one came out. I mean this one was pretty dirty and had some black spots on it and it just looks really, really nice, and we haven't lost any of the detail from this really nice engraving that's on here, and it just took a little bit of the jewelry cleaner, the gentle clean solution and a little bit of the polishing cloth that I used, and this came out really nice.

I mean it's looking brand new, that ring. I think that's pretty clear. The Judith Ripka piece I thought was orange, but apparently it's clear. It just had a whole bunch of dirt and junk on it, and so that's all cleaned up now and looks nice and is ready for me to put on eBay. This one was a surprise. I didn't even know that it kind of had some little bit of gold detailing on the side of it. It's kind of hard to pick it up, and then also it's got these little slots here in the ring. Those were all gunked up and you couldn't even see through them, and now there's light coming through that's making the stones look a lot better, and this is a designer signed piece that before, maybe I wouldn't have been able to list by itself, and now I can because it's all nice and clean and you can see the details and it actually is a really nice eternity band ring. So that one came out really good and it's got a little bit of that gold detailing, which I didn't even see before.

Here's the other Judith Ripka that was orange. We just got that all cleaned up and that one looks great, and then we've got our platinum and diamond cuff links, which of course already looked really amazing, but I noticed they were a little bit dirty. I think the gentle jewelry cleaner is a great every day cleaner, especially for any kind of clear stones. You'd be really surprised how much sparkle you can get back out of a clear stone. I mean CZs and diamonds are a great thing to use the cleaner for, and something that you want to regularly use to clean your jewelry, because clear stones get yellowed and foggy very easily and very quickly.

And you can see just from the before and then where these are at now and how much more sparkle they have, that the cleaner definitely worked and I really liked that little brush that helps get in behind the stones and you kind of push the bristles through the stone in the back, and it's going to clean up all the gunk off the stones, which helps them shine quite a bit, and then even on gold, especially on antique gold, you want something that's real light and easy. So all of those pieces came out very nicely. Again, thank you guys for watching. I hope you liked this video about some jewelry cleaning, and please be sure to check out my links in the description below. It really helps support the channel so I'm able to continue making the estate hauls and other videos that I make for you guys to please support the channel and check those out and be sure to hit that subscribe button. Thanks for watching.

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