How long until Lincoln Memorial pennies start disappearing?

Back in the mid-1970s when bringing my paycheck to the bank I would get ten dollars in rolled cents. After pulling out any wheats they would get rerolled and stacked in metal containers that held a hundred dollars. This stopped in 1980 but I still have the rolled cents.

 

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When they discontinue maintaining the cents in circulation they will most probably melt all the coins on hand and announce a redemption period during which people can return coins to the FED. Many voters would be quite angry to be stuck with hundreds or thousands of cents with no recourse. The number of these coins in FED inventory is not very high and few pennies would be redeemed anyway. But we're still talking many tons of zinc and copper so the FED isn't going to bury the coins in landfill. They will be sold to manufacturers who will use them as chill scrap in their various processes and alloy production. In less than a year all the cents in circulation will be turned into consumer products where they belong.

This is the fate of all base metal coins, all coins now days. They are eventually inflated to having no value (like the penny ~1982) and then they are recalled and destroyed. Older coins were rarely recalled because they were just going to be debased meaning the public would hold onto their older coins. Try finding any specimens of the huge mintage old Indian coins. These coins were not only destroyed by the government as available but the public used them as fodder for various purposes as inflation ate away theiur face value. Many modern coins are actually quite elusive despite their enormous mintages for this reason. The Japanese hauled South American coins to Japan by the boat load all through the end of the last century.

The same thing must happen to the penny and nickel. Eventually it will even happen to the cl and some sad day to the small dollar. So long as government spends far more than it has the currency must erode and every material has some value by the billions.

 

They won't be "stuck" with them because they will still be legal tender, but they will cease to circulate and most of them will never come back out of change hoards to the banks. Those that do come back will probably have the copper ones removed and the Zincs redistributed to the banks until the return flow dwindles to the point where there just aren't enough available and cents are rationed to the banks. By that point businesses will be rounding on their own because they can't get the cents they need. Cents will stop flowing from businesses to hoards, and will slow and pretty much stop flowing from hoards to banks because they are "scarce, and may be valuable in the future". And the cents will cease to circulate.

 

A business needs a steady flow of coins. Without a sufficient number of pennies they'll have to round ALL cash transactions. When all the stores are rounding there will be no place in the cash register for pennies and no mechanism for people to get rid of their cents.

There's really only a single solution and this is to cut off penny use through fiat or edict and recall the pennies. They wouldn't have to announce a time limit but without a time limit fewer would come back and more would end up as litter and waste. The infrascructure is already in place to move these coins around and it won't exist in a few years after the cessation of penny production. So they'll probably put a time limit on how long you can return pennies. The time limits are usually long enough that there is no mad rush to dump coins. I doubt there will be an extremely large number returned because most of these have already been destroyed. Pennies just don't have much value now days and many people will want to keep them as a memento or because they think they'll be valuable. I'd guess the FED, mints, and banks could hardly scare up 10 billion of them and there are another 40 billion held by the public of which fewer than half would be redeemed.

Penny drives near the end of the redemption period should be very highly effective. "Penny" drives in the future will be more profitable because they'll get lots of nickels and dimes. Pennies today are an albatross. They are an anachronism that reminds us of a time that not only dollars had value but even one cent had value.

 

A lot of the citizenry have no use for the cents now anyways. If the cent went away, businesses would round up/down as necessary. I've already encountered businesses where when the total is, say 5.51 or 5.52 and I give them 6.00, I get back 50 cents (2 quarters). They just don't bother with the small stuff. If they have a "give a penny - take a penny" tray, then they make it up from there. Many people do just leave their pennies behind already. I even see nickels and dimes in there now.

 

I don't see Memorial cents disappearing from circulation in my lifetime. Just way too many of them.

 

Perhaps.

But about the same day the mint quits making them they will disappear from circulation.

 

Then it is one out of 318.9 million (2014) in the US

 

Percentage type of cents in circulation(Excluding 2009 cents):
Flying Eagles:<0.01%
Indian Heads:>0.66%
Wheats: 7.14%
Copper Memorials:19.19%
Zinc Memorials:23%
Shields: 50%

Every time I CRH I tend to find a wheat penny every 5 rolls and I tend to see more shields than memorials. I think copper memorials are being pulled out for their metal content which may explain why there are more zinc memorials and shields.

 

Why are people pulling out copper cents? Isn’t it illegal to melt them?

 

Hoarders and collectors are pulling them out (for the copper) like what happened in the 1960's when silver were pulled out for their metal content. So when the 2006 ban is lifted its going to be a repeat of the 1980 silver melt but with copper instead.

 

Section 331 of Title 18 of the United States code provides criminal penalties for anyone who fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the Mints of the United States. This statute means that you may be violating the law if you change the appearance of the coin and fraudulently represent it to be other than the altered coin that it is. As a matter of policy, the Mint does not promote coloring, plating or altering U.S. coinage: however, there are no sanctions against such activity absent fraudulent intent.

 

You can melt them for the following

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/31/82.2

(b) The prohibition contained in § 82.1 against the treatment of 5-cent coins and one-cent coins shall not apply to the treatment of these coins for educational, amusement, novelty, jewelry, and similar purposes as long as the volumes treated and the nature of the treatment makes it clear that such treatment is not intended as a means by which to profit solely from the value of the metal content of the coins.


Jim

 

I pull them out but then I sell them for $1.00 a roll. I basically double my money but I don't account for my time.

 

Nice.

 

Not a bad racket.

 

Works for me. I have fun CRHing, pull out older coins and what interest me and then sell the copper coins. Naturally I take the zinc coins back to the bank in exchange for more rolls that I haven't searched.

 

Thanks for this.

I had thought that most of the melting going on was illegal but it looks like it's mostly just illegal for businesses to profit by buying them for less than melt.

 

This might be useful. This process is for minting copper plated zinc pennies since 1982. The blanks are received from a company, Jarden Zinc which gets them from Chinese zinc mines. When the mint receives them, they are cut out, blanks then are softened into planchets at the mint then they are plated with copper. In the end they are coined, placed in mint bags, sent to the FED, rolled by armed car companies such as Brinks, then sent to banks, and then they are placed into circulation.

Heres a video on how the U.S mint minted coins such as pennies in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Heres how they make pennies nowadays

 

I don't know where Jarden gets the zinc, but the planchets are delivered to the mint by Jarden ready for striking. The mint does not cut the blanks, upset them, or plate them. The zinc planchets do not need annealing before striking either.

The description, other than plating, would fit for the other denominations. The metal for those arrives at the mint in large coils of metal strip.