diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.18.1.txt b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.18.1.txt
index 70a1ad4a335ea..417988c2f935f 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.18.1.txt
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.18.1.txt
@@ -43,3 +43,5 @@ Performance Improvements
 
 Bug Fixes
 ~~~~~~~~~
+
+- Bug in ``to_clipboard`` when called for objects containing unicode without passing an encoding (:issue:`12529`)
diff --git a/pandas/io/clipboard.py b/pandas/io/clipboard.py
index 2109e1c5d6d4c..956f3859a04fe 100644
--- a/pandas/io/clipboard.py
+++ b/pandas/io/clipboard.py
@@ -73,6 +73,9 @@ def to_clipboard(obj, excel=None, sep=None, **kwargs):  # pragma: no cover
       - Linux: xclip, or xsel (with gtk or PyQt4 modules)
       - Windows:
       - OS X:
+      
+    If the object contains unicode and no encoding is passed as keyword 
+    argument, the default locale will be used.
     """
     from pandas.util.clipboard import clipboard_set
     if excel is None:
@@ -86,6 +89,12 @@ def to_clipboard(obj, excel=None, sep=None, **kwargs):  # pragma: no cover
             obj.to_csv(buf, sep=sep, **kwargs)
             clipboard_set(buf.getvalue())
             return
+        except UnicodeEncodeError:
+            # try again with encoding from locale
+            from locale import getdefaultlocale
+            obj.to_csv(buf, sep=sep, encoding=getdefaultlocale()[1], **kwargs)
+            clipboard_set(buf.getvalue())
+            return
         except:
             pass