Hello all. I am new to the coin talk forum and fairly new to coin collecting (3 years). I already love this site and come here regularly. I have learned so much from all of you. My main interest has been the lincoln cent but I collect all recent mint issues as well. I mainly intersted in circulated wheats and lincolns and search about $30-$50 a week in bank rolls. My search includes cherry picking wheats, foreign coins and the more popular errors. However, I recently saw someone else on another thread saying that he/she was taking out the pre-1982 pennies. I assume this is for the intrinsic value of the copper. My questions are 1.) Are there any others on here doing the same? 2. If you are doing this, are you just hoarding them? 3. If you are not hoarding them, are you taking these coins to be recycled and if so, where? Thanks.
I still save wheat pennies but not bothering saving any others beyond the best condition I can find for any given year and mintmark for my Whitman book. If copper rises significantly or they phase out the penny entirely, may think about it then, lol.
Only save wheat cents, I do not think there will every be any money to be made in saving pre 1982 cents for copper value.
I don’t think it’s legal to recycle US coins. My brother and I have talked about a way to shred copper cent’s and then recycle the chips as ether copper casting alloy (C83400) or copper sheet (C21000). We would never be able make any money doing it, but it was fun to talk about it. :goofer: p.s. I do keep all the copper cents I find in my pocket change.
I don't think there is any law prohibiting the melting of US coins. However, to make $100, you're probably going to have to collect a minimum of about 15,000 cents. You have to ask yourself whether or not it's worth the effort.
One of the advantages of the credit union to which we belong is that they still have a coin counter! No re-rolling for us... It was one of the first things that the local banks eliminated when 'cost cutting'-- now, it's re-roll, please, or we're not interested. Many won't offer rolls either.
It is time consuming, that's for sure... However I don't see any harm in hoarding if you have the space and time. The way I think of it is that most people probably have some "emergency cash laying around the house" If you had 100 rolls of pre-82's then I don't see the big deal in have $50 sitting in a closet or basement. No harm in that. And for all those saying it's a wast of money, that you can invest the cents into other things... well, yes you can. But you have to remember, it takes a lot of pennies to make a dollar, so how many pennies are you going to have to accumulate to make any significant profit off of whatever investment your going to invest in?
There is a law forbidding the melting of the cents and five cent pieces. Everything else is fair game but not worth doing. They said the same thing about saving the silver coins back in the early 1960's
Yeah, as Conder said above me, what we're seeing with the copper memorial cents now was said about regular circulating silver coinage back in the day. Is it really gonna hurt you to sort out, say, $100 face value in copper cents and put it in a bag somewhere? At any rate, the people pulling copper cents out now are just the tip of the iceberg... as the dollar continues to devalue and copper demand rises during an economic recovery, more and more people will jump onboard, and soon enough, you'll have copper being pulled from circulation at such a rate that it would mostly disappear within a couple years.
I started to pull all pre-82 cents as of right now I've filled one 30 cal ammo can ... my goal is to fill 2 x 81 mm mortar ammo cans ... i don't bother rolling cents ... once I fill a 30 cal ammo can of cents I take it in to my local Wells Fargo and ask for a deposit bag fill it then they send it out to be counted and funds are deposited in 5-7 day typically...
I've been doing this for a while, mainly because it's fun. It's not really worth it but it all adds up if you have a lot of pennies.
Yes. I pull out all copper cents as they are worth more than a cent. They currently sell for a premium on ebay. If the laws change at some point (illegal to melt cents) they will be worth more. The reason I do it is it gives me something to do when searching cents. It doesn't cost much, and if I ever get desperate, I can take them to the coin counter at the bank and I haven't lost a cent, pun intended.
