Here's the situation; There is a Ziploc Bag of wheat pennies (maybe 400 total). Some in paper rolls, some loose. At least one paper roll is full of steel wheaties. The non-rolled steel wheaties are inside a small tune inside the overall bag. None of these pennies ever came from a dealer or any other numismatic source. These have all been taken from circulation or coin machine reject type sources. In other words, these all sort of started out as junk. The issue; RUST. Opening the roll of steals lets loose a nice shaking of rust powder. The loose steals are also showing some signs as well. Not all coins are rusty. The question; What to do about it? Obviously, rust happens and cannot be prevented without taking extraordinary precautions. I live in a warm humid area. These are just pennies that cost a cent to obtain and there are no delusions of value here. So solutions cannot include actually spending money to preserve them. Are the rusty ones just too far gone to care about? Will they infect the non-rusty ones? Should the rusty and non-rusty be segregated? Annnnnnnnnnnnnd...discuss
I don't know if they should be separated, but if you are not going to be able to see any value from them, why not spend them or give them to YN's. Just about a week or so ago at a flea market some guy had a bunch of lower grade and corroded steelies, selling for 50 cents each. I passed and I don't know if there is much of a market in them in the condition described.
Separate out the non-rusted coins - they have some numismatic value. The rusted coins should be given to children - donate them to a school. Tells kids an interesting story about history and gives them a piece of it.
