Question about cleaning Lincoln pennies

Since I am not a constitutional (or any other kind) lawyer, I won't dispute what you have said. However, I have read other posts where similar things have been discussed and the consensus I remember is that the no melting thing is for cent coins. Seriously, what do you think the gold and silver places do with the 90% they take in? Intent has a lot to do with the rest of this. Cut-out coin jewelery and paste-ups of cut currency have been around for a long time, but the catch is that there is no intent to mislead or defraud. Perhaps someone else can speak to this.

 

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Here's about melting cent coins: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/2006-12-14-melting-ban-usat_x.htm

 

And about melting 90% silver: http://about.ag/meltingsilvercoins.htm

 

That was 10 years ago, does it still apply? Also a lot of those "cash for gold" places are scams.

 

The 2006 law applies to pennies and nickels. The government was trying to avert what happened in 1965 when silver coins were replaced and people started hoarding them for melt value. It caused a serious coin shortage (which explains the huge mint numbers for coins in the mid 1960's as well as the absence of mint marks on them). It was so bad that by 1967 the federal government passed a law that banned melting silver. But within a few years all the silver had been pulled from circulation so the melting law got repealed....huge mintages of clad coins in the mid 1960s had pretty much replaced all silver currency so there was no longer any need to protect the silver currency from melting.

To prevent the same thing from happening with nickel and copper, the 2006 law was passed. Many feel that as happened with the 1967 law, the 2006 will be repealed eventually once the number of pre-1981 coins is a negligible percentage of circulating coins. At that point, any mass melting of them would not cause a coin shortage.

It seems that about 20-25% pennies circulating today are pre-1981 so that's still too high a percentage to repeal the law. Another theory is that the penny will be discontinued entirely at some point in which case the melting law would also most likely be repealed. The only thing the government cares about is whether melting would cause a coin shortage. Once a shortage is no longer a threat, there will be no need for the melting ban.

 

Don't underestimate the "junk coin" market. A ton of stackers prefer junk coins to bullion for the additional numismatic interest, and I think that market is large enough to give the cash for gold types a distribution system that doesn't involve melting.

Melting coins is easy. Unraveling alloys to a resellable purity is rather more complicated, and probably not easily profitable.

 

Other people are responding that it is still current for a few years. The gold and silver places might be considered scams in that they low-ball you on the price they pay for metals, but I think the majority of the 90% they take in is sent to refiners. I will look on e-bay to see if anyone is selling 90%n bars.

 

Ah OK. I see. I know what happened with Canada when they announced they were banning the penny and any in circulation would be destroyed, people hoarded them a lot. That's what got me to buy a small $11 lot of about 20 uncirculated ones, including magnetic ones.

 

You left something out on your quote from Title 18 Chapter 17. What you quoted was from Section 331 and it reads

Whoever fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates, impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the mints of the United States, or any foreign coins which are by law made current or are in actual use or circulation as money within the United States; or

Whoever fraudulently possesses, passes, utters, publishes, or sells, or attempts to pass, utter, publish, or sell, or brings into the United States, any such coin, knowing the same to be altered, defaced, mutilated, impaired, diminished, falsified, scaled, or lightened—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

See the highlighted words. There has to be fraudulent intent for the alteration or mutilation to be illegal.

What you quoted about the paper currency (Sec 333) is correct. Any alteration or mutilation of it, fraudulent intent or not, is illegal.

 

So I recently started collecting Lincoln's to the year 1982 since they are 95% copper and switched in 82 to zinc. I was wondering most of mine are a brownish color, but can still see everything on them. Would it be a good idea to clean them to there original state

 

Copper is notoriously problematic to clean,