Well i was sorting my copper pennys and placing them in rolls since i had them all in a jar. So i ended up with $11.50. Not much right? but then i go to coinflation to check it out and it ends up to cost $33.30 melt value!? This is like getting rich if i had a penny sorter machine and doing it non stop. I bet i could end up getting more money that in a 10 hour job that pays minimum wage. Is it me or is this just crazy?? sorry i got carried on. This is just simply amazing in my opinion. Do you think its worth investing more time in copper penny's now a days?
Hoarding pre 1982 cents does seem to be catching on. Many folks are going to the bank and buying $25 boxes. That's 50 rolls per box. One box will yield on average 600 pre 1982 copper cents. It takes 153 cents to make a pound. Copper is at $4.35 per pound now.
Been doing it all day! Going through a huge jar and giving the old lady the Zn and I keep the Cu! She takes them up to the bank and cashing them in, and I wrap the Cu's and mark #29 on the side. (Atomic Number! My stamp only has numbers on it!) The most time consuming part is weighing out the 82's, and boy they made a lot of 82's back in '82! Did I mention I have an '82 Trans Am with 82K miles on her! Guess when my house was built? errrr wrong!!! '93 LOL
Is Hoarding Pre-1982 Copper Cents Pointless! is a link to a thread and poll that I have started on this subject last march. Many people are sorting and hoarding and others are even doubling their money on eBay consistently selling Cents in groups of $50 face or more. $200 Face sold for $355 $100 Face sold for $177.51 and both of these auctions are from back in early December
It was also illegal to melt Silver U.S. coins until they were able to pull enough of them out of circulation so as not to cause a shortage. I am sure it will not be too long in the future when enough copper cents are out of circulation and the lifting of the ban will no longer risk a cent shortage.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. The price quoted ($4.35) is for Grade A (pure) copper. Since pre-82 cents contain 5% tin and zinc, the melt value is only about 25% of the quoted price because the coins have to be processed to extract the copper. Chris
So... if current melt value of a cent is .028, then the actual price you could sell for is 25% of this, or .007 (less than one cent)? I think I'm doing my math incorrectly.
You could say the same thing for 90% silver coins, but I definitely don't see them selling for 25% under spot.
The January 10th issue of Coin World (Page 4) has an article about the production costs of circulating US coins. They report that each 5¢ nickel (75% copper) cost 9.24¢ to produce...interesting. I wonder how many people's annual income tax payments are completely wasted in the effort to continue producing these worthless coins? ...when was the last time you bought something for a nickel? :kewl: Hmmm...let's see. Considering distribution and storage costs, let's round up slightly to get to round figures. :scratch: In 2010, the Mint produced $25 Million worth of nickles at a cost to tax payers of $50 Million. I know it doesn't sound like much, but you keep adding it up and pretty soon we're talking about REAL money! :thumb:
I doubt if I had been around in 1965 I would have roll searched for silver but I would have saved any silver I got in change. I save any pre-1982 pennies I find but I'm not on a hunt for them. By the time you factor in the costs of gas and rewrapping pennies to cash in it's probably not worth it.
That is the point of seignorage, though. The idiot news services love to point out how much it costs to make a cent or nickel, they don't like to mention that Golden Dollars cost about 21 cents each, Halves 17 cents, Quarters 7.3 cents, Dimes 3.1 cents. (United States Mint, 2004 Annual Report, pg. 45) Take those figures against 2010 mintages and you will find that the Mint makes money (seignorage) on coining money. The news services love to point out the losses, but they don't report the profits. This is only done to stir up emotions of a stupid public and because the "news" is mostly reactionary entertainment these days. We are smarter than that folks. Like it or not, our system really does work pretty well.
They may make money overall, but they would make more money if they weren't losing it on cents and nickels. Even if our system "really does work pretty well", why not make obvious improvements?
True...but the seignorage would be higher if they weren't throwing away money on obsolete coins. Additionally, "seignorage" is the profit (so to speak) that the Mint takes in (difference between a coin's production cost from its denomination). Since 1965 our money has had little real value; its value is the "promise" of the US government to buy it back at a specific price...but the government still has to buy it back...so what have they gained? The only "seignorage" the government takes in is the unconstitutional (imo) tax it places on its citizens by debasing the currency.
You can say it until the cows come home, it's nonsense. The melt temperature for tin and zinc is significantly lower than it is on copper. The zinc starts oozing out well before you get anywhere near the nearly 2000 degrees farenheit necessary to melt the copper. And any copper dealer will tell you the copper left behind is very high grade.
Um, alloys don't work that way. An alloy is effectively a solution of one metal in another. Unless you were talking about getting the zinc out of post-1982 pennies -- and even then, it wouldn't work, because the molten zinc sticks to the solid copper. If the melt ban is lifted, people will build plants that efficiently refine cents, but it's not that simple.
Agreed, you can't just torch the zinc out because they are bonded at the molecular level. Not the same as clad of two different metals. However 2% Zinc is NOT going to kill the going cost of a brick of copper/brass... It's pure enough to do quality plating which is one of the reasons I horde pre 82's. Been meaning to use these pennies for bullets! Either by swaging or plating lead cast bullets that I already make. But you didn't hear that from me! BTW: Add a little more Zinc to your molten pre 82's, and you could have bricks of quality Brass! Add a little Tin and you have bricks of quality bronze!
