I still do, but I feel silly for it, because the price of copper and nickel isn't nearly as high as it was when I started doing it. Nickel metal content is worth considerably less than five cents now. At this point it's just a simple compulsion.
I don't want to use the word "save" but I have a box I throw coppers & box for non. When the box of non copper gets full I trade them in for rolls of whatever my fancy for the day is. Nickels the same. But I will hold on to war Nickels & older.
Before deciding this little venture worth your while, please do spend a little time researching it. Better yet, make the effort to speak to a refiner about what, if legal, he would be paying for the copper/metal (hint: the numbers given by coinflation and the like are unrealistic).
I've been saying this same thing about copper cents for many, many years. Most people don't realize that Lincoln cents are not Grade A Copper, and it costs the refiners to extract the copper. For that reason, most refiners will only pay about 25% of the price of Grade A Copper. Chris
Yep. It would take a lot of changes for copper cents and nickels to be worth smelting, even if their "metal value" (the value of their component metals if they were magically separated into pure form at no cost) went back above their face value. On the other hand, if it became legal to smelt copper cents or nickels, it might be worth someone's while to develop an economical refinement process for that specific alloy. (That's an easier task than "refine copper containing 5% of random stuff".) If that happened, refiners might offer higher prices.
Fair enough.... but one should be aware of the present realities if they're considering saving such coins based solely upon metal content. Unfortunately, sites such as the aforementioned simply do not give all the facts, and the numbers given can easily be misunderstood.
Canada has been steadily reclaiming copper cents for several years now as they make their way back to the banks. In due time there will be none or very few left floating around. And although there is no official news of the U.S. doing so, I am seeing less and less in my bank box searching. Although there may not be much worth in saving them overall, eventually there will come a day when they are gone for good. So save them or not, it's worth thinking about.
It doesn't matter one iota if the US government "absorbs" them as they come into the Federal Reserve system. When was the last time that the US government ever balanced the budget? Chris
I used to save copper cents but don't anymore for future smelting reasons mentioned, storage space, etc. Since pre-1982 cents have a high and stable percentage of copper, I'm sure the metal could be refined as is and recycled for certain applications, which would increase pay out. At least this seems as likely as lessening the cost of extracting copper from the alloy
If you do hold on to cents, be careful out there... OKLA. WOMAN SUFFERS 3RD-DEGREE BURNS FROM PENNIES LEFT IN CAR
I have saved nearly every wheat penny I have come across over the years. I've also inherited quite a few. So I do have a stash of them. But I save them because they are wheat pennies, not because they are copper. I see bars and coins of fine copper selling at coin shows for about $1 an ounce. If you want to save copper, you may want to take 100 of those pennies and cash them in for one of those shiny ounce bars.
Is there really a significant collector's market for those? If I just wanted to get "fine copper", I can't really see paying $1 for a one-ounce bar, when I see one-pound bars listed for $7 or less, and home improvement stores selling #1 (high-grade) copper pipe for less than $4/pound. When you go to sell it back to a scrap dealer, you're likely to get closer to $2/pound. The spread on copper is a lot wider than the spread on silver or gold. Even if you think the price of copper is about to soar, bulk copper seems like a particularly bulky and back-breaking way to speculate. It's hard for me to imagine copper going up a lot faster than silver, and just compare their physical properties -- the copper would weigh 128 times as much (almost 9 pounds of copper to match 1 troy ounce of silver), and take up 150 times the space! And gold is a hundred times more compact than silver. Of course, a one-ounce copper round or bar is nicer to look at than a length of pipe. Just keep in mind that you're buying entertainment, not investing. (That's probably a good mantra for our hobby in general...)
I completely agree and my comment was supposed to be somewhat tongue in cheek (I should have used an emoticon there). I don't think copper is a great investment in general, but at least with the fine bars you get something pretty to look at.