Hoarding copper pennies

I search about 3000 pennies a week and keep all copper.. I find only about 2 or 3 wheats per thousand so they truly are getting scarce in pocket change.. any knowledgeable collector would not spend any copper penny that they find. The lincoln memorial design is already obsolete that alone should be enough clue that the memorial design will increase in value dramatically in a few years

 

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Copper pennies will never be legal to melt!

 

The world will end in 2000! No one can tell the future. Definitive statements like "always" and "never" are usually wrong given a long enough time-line.

 

Exactly. Are people considering it a physical store of value, or are they planning on using the copper to make things out of? You don't melt down Gold Eagles to make bullion bricks.

And anyone who thinks somehow the world will be so short on copper that melting pennies will make any difference, its estimated that somewhere around the year 7,500, we might hit "Peak Copper"

 

Like I said before, there is a new law against it, but that does not make it illegal. Courts have ruled repeatedly coins are personal property, you can destroy them at will. Congress passed a law, but it would be struck down if anyone ever challenged it. They will too, when pennies melt for $.08 or something, someone will challenge the law and it will be overturned. Might as well be prepared for when that happens, eh?

 

3000+ pounds and counting. I grew up "a penny saved......" I think it is cool that now a copper penny saved, is two pennies earned. Even better are the copper pennies worth a thousand times their face value!

 

A penny has a diameter of .75 " and a thickness of .061" (from Wikipedia).
(.75 / 2) ^ 2 * pi * .061 = 0.02694897448157491734375 cubic inches (we'll round in a second).
Eight tons is 7,257,600 grams.
One penny (pre-1982) is 3.1 grams
Eight tons = 16000 lbs = 256,000 ounces * 28.35 grams / 3.1 grams per penny = 2,341,161 pennies
2,341,161 pennies * 0.02694897448157491734375 cubic inches = 63,091.895870154232294838709677419 cubic inches.
Divide that by 1728 (number of cubic inches in a cubic foot) = around 36.5 cubic feet

Of course, this does not take in to account the space between pennies (since pennies are round). I like math, so let's figure out the real space required:

.75 " is the diameter, so let's make it a .75 " square to account for the space between stacks. Then you have:
.75 * .75 * .061 = 0.0343125 cubic inches. Times 2,341,161 pennies = 80,331.0868125 cubic inches. Divided by 1728 = 46 cubic feet.

So realistically, you need 46 cubic feet of space. That's a 5 ft x 5 ft square that's about two feet tall.

Honestly I thought it was going to be bigger.

 

Would that be a cord of cents?

 

Well, just doing a calc on coinflation shows that $1 face in nickels is only worth $1.09 in metal value. That is only nine percent over face value and not worth it to me.

Now a copper cent where $1 face equals $2.38 in metal value or 138% over face (at this moment). That's a tasty return - 15 times more tasty than nickels, and very much worth the investment and time to pull from circulation.

 

Has anyone ever thought about how difficult copper pennies will be to liquidate? Even if demonetized, a bank or the government will give you one cent for each when you return them, regardless of the metal content. They care less about the value of the base metal, except for manufacturing costs. You don't expect the government to give you more than a dollar for a silver dollar do you, even if it's an ASE? And the mint won't buy them back. They will only be exchanged. The only structure for selling coins for intrinsic value is through a smelter. They won't normally deal directly with the public. So that leaves you with dealing with coin dealers. Just ask one if he would buy a 1000 lb delivery of pennies at intrinsic value. They would become a storage and transportation problem to him, because he becomes a drop off point for many hoarders totaling thousands of pounds. It would be a real headach. Plus, they would discount the value just like the smelter discounts it from the dealer. There is no get rich quick opportunity here. But we all use our time as we see fit. And if someone choose's to spend it collecting pennies, I see no harm.

 

The real question—assuming that it would be legal to melt 1¢ coins—is how much a smelter would be/is willing to pay for bronze composition cents.
Remember, the $0.0238 equivalent is for a pure amount of copper, after refining, etc. Obviously, a smelter needs to cover the costs of refining the alloy to pure copper (including overhead, transportation [$1,000 worth of copper weighs a lot more than $1,000 worth of silver], etc.). Anybody want to hazard a guess?

Darn, the previous poster essentially said the same thing about post #109

 

But right now if you can get other consumers to buy them from you for 1.7x face as a "commodity" (like is done with silver coins) then you could possibly make a decent profit for not that much work. Who cares if it actually ever gets melted or not, you're offering a product for someone else to buy, and there seems to be a market for the product right now.

 

There is no argument here. But that shifts the idea from saving them to flipping them. I think many of the hoarders are thinking about a later time frame than this.

 

People trade them right now on ebay and other forums for 1.4 to 1.8x's face. The preferred method of shipping is $100 face or 68 pounds in a flat rate box for about $11. I think most people would agree that there is no way to get rich doing this and to do it on a large scale is actually a lot of work with lots of overhead costs, but as a hobby, if you enjoy it, it is not the worst thing in the world. I wish I had horded these instead of baseball cards in the late 80's and 90's.

 

Well, I still put all mine in tubes and stack the boxes. Since I search rolls anyway, saving the copper seems a no brainer. Why would you spend something for less than what it's worth ? And it doesn't break my budget to toss a few dollars of copper cents in the stash each week.

Maybe some day my kids will reap a large reward. and if they don't, so what ? At least they will have several boxes (as many as I can do)sorted into rolls by date and mint. Who knows, maybe new varieties will be discovered or something ?

 

This was a great unsolved mystery for me too a couple years ago as well Midway through 1982, the US decided to switch from the 95% copper cent to the 97.5% zinc cent becouse of the rise price of copper. So to answer your question... yes, all mints began making the new zinc cents once legislation was passed.

However, there is a pretty accurate way to tell if you have a Copper 1982 or a Zincon. You simply drop the coin on a hard surface (or flip it in the air) and lisen to the sound it makes. Copper coins have a sort of melodic and high-pitch ring to them, while zincs issue a dull clunking sound when they are struck. Hope this clears some of it up
-C.J.

 

Just wanted to say I love your signature line! From one of my favorite movies.

 

Uhh.. Scrap Metal

Why would this be any different than selling aluminum cans? Scrap metal dealers would buy the copper were it legal to melt. They buy copper pipe and wire now, why would pennies be any different? They also have silver refineries you can ship to online who give you 90% of spot price for the silver you send in. Why wouldn't copper refineries do the same? Also, some people have the ability to melt stuff in their own backyard. 1 lb copper ingots wouldn't be hard to smelt by yourself.

 

I save pre-1982 cents also. But i dont melt them in my backyard...big brother has spy sat's that can see license plate numbers.

 

Great post! re: "There is no get rich quick opportunity here."

Read more: http://www.cointalk.com/t91319-8/#ixzz1ntpewwYW

I was going to do hoarding of the nickle which has a melt value of .058 until I realized exactly what you say. This concept is an example of small thinking with big heads or big thinking with a small head, imo!