Copper in pennies worth more than a cent...

We've got an interesting situation brewing with the bullion value of both the one-cent and five-cent pieces now above face value. The best bullion value in the market is the copper cent 1982 and earlier that are now worth better than two cents each just in metal. Those who remember the late sixties will recall the period in which silver and clad quarters dimes and halves circulated together... but then eventually the silver dried up. I've often thought I should have started pulling silver earlier, while they were still common.

You can still pull copper from circulation of course... the trouble is that most people don't think it's worth the trouble, and anyway it's an eyestraining backbreaking task. I've often thought about how cool it would be to have a machine capable of sorting the copper from the zinc pennies. Well... a guy up in Michigan has done it! Andy Ryedale of Ryedale Coin makes and sells a cute little desktop sorting machine for just that purpose. I just finished sorting a whole bag of 5000 in a matter of a half-hour or so. Basically as fast as you can break open and dump rolls into the hopper the machine will take them and spit them out from two chutes. There are a couple complications.... you have to be careful not to let any bits of paper from the rolls get in there as they will cause a jam. Jams are not too hard to clear but you need to power down the machine and open the front to get inside.

If you're interested in the whole idea of hoarding copper cents, there's a forum at http://realcent.forumco.com/ which is dedicated to the premise that copper is the next big thing. Lots of folks jumping on copper while we can. Andy's coin sorter page is at http://www.ryedalecoin.com/

Have fun... and don't spend any more of those two-cent pennies!

Tom

 

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i have been saving copper cents along time now. i have about 12 rolls of just copper. i agree with you, save all the copper cents everybody. they will be worth alot some day. i might have to check into that machine! sounds like a good creation. its only a cent, save it when it gets high or if copper drops (which i doubt) you still have them and you can sell them and make a huge profit. i agree with you 100% save those coppers!

 

$800!!! never mind, i will just sort by hand!!

 

Not $800... more like $600. It's not something you'd get if you only wanted a few dozen rolls of copper... more like if you were interested in thousands of rolls. I was thinking it would be a neat thing to take to coin shows and offer to buy copper pennies. To stake out a solid position in copper you have to talk in larger bulk quantities than in silver or gold of course. But I think the potential profit margin is huge, it would be like being able to buy gold at $300 or silver at $6 right now. You know you'd do it! The labor of sorting is the killer... and this thing covers it. I figure the immediate profits on sorting 50 bags of cents would about cover it.

 

well, it seems handy. i seriouly want to start getting into this copper cent business. who knows, i might go ahead and buy one in a few years. i've noticed prices drop when a thing has been out in the market quite a while. i bet in a few years that same machine will be manafactured by dozens of companies, and sell for under $300. that is the time i will buy mine. just look, when the first dvd players came out, they were very very expensive. now, they are like $30 for a player and 2 for $11 movies at walmart. i think the longer this machine is out, the cheeper the pice will be and the more people buy it. and more people and soon enough, it will be cheap. if i had $600, i would buy this machine with no hesitation. i might even save up. if you think about it, if you have this machine, buy the rolls of cents, sort them, sell them, that pays for the machine in no time!

 

i am curious who is buying one cent at a premium right now? I thought it was illegal to melt them?

 

It is illegal to melt them, but you can still sell them for a profit or hold onto them. As long as you don't have the intent of melting them. Some dealers might buy some for a premium, but in these early stages of the game, it would be hard to find some one to buy them for over face. What is copper at now by the way, anyone?

Phoenix

 

95 cents per roll is the melt value today. so right no you could get a 45 cent profit off a roll of copper cents. i know these are going to go up dramtically. that means you could get a profit of $22.50 off a box of copper cents, not bad.

 

$2.8365 per pound for Monday's open.

 

With approximately 90 copper cents per pound, we're closing in on 3 x face.

 

I thought you were allowed to deface pennies, but not nickels or higher?

 

Altering or defacing any US coins is illegal - if it is done with an intent to defraud.

 

What you can and can't do and then what you will be prosecuted and not prosecuted for are two very different ideas. Yes, it's illegal to destroy money - however, I highly doubt you'll be prosecuted because the Federal government profits in most cases if you actually do destroy the money. Now the penny and nickel are becoming exceptions - but if you destroy say one of those new George Washington dollars, the government will simply make a brand new one at a fraction of the cost and keep the change. Now pennies and nickels, yes, if enough people destroyed enough that had to be replaced, seeing it costs more than a penny to make a penny (or one cent - I don't see the big deal in being so forceful with the correct term) then it would be a concern to the government. I still highly doubt the government would prosecute anyone for destroying money - for one it's stupid and for two if it does become profitable that profit will not last for very long. Look at how long silver lasted in circulation. Eventually all the coppers will disappear from circulation anyway. I have about $50 worth of BU coppers in a huge jug. I've been sorting pennies for a couple years now. If it's BU and copper, it's a keeper!

Esky

 

i don't know about anyone else, but the main reason i keep the copper cents is because some day they all will be out of circualtion and i can give them to my kids/grandkids when i die. its just something i do. i don't do it for the profit, i just do it for the matter of collecting coins. i just can't bring myself to spend them because they saw copper is the new silver. people kept silver when they stopped making them. now look at them. their making a huge profit. i'm just saving because there will be no copper left in circulation i'm guessing in 2020.

 

I'd sure appreciate a citation to that law. Even with ~45 years experience in legal research, including a couple years teaching the subject in a night law school, I haven't been able to find it.

 

Laws vary from nation to nation. Apparently it's illegal in the British Commonwealth to deface the portrait of the queen. (does that mean that as long as you work around the image it's okay??) In the US the standard seems to be any attempt to defraud. So... changing the date or mintmark of a coin to create a rarity would be attempting fraud and therefore illegal. Putting a personal, corporate, or political message on a coin is merely the creation of a 'coin novelty'. The recent ban on melting coins is apparently in response to a couple large operators who were mining out the copper and zinc from the penny supply and smelting it. The ban is likely to be temporary because the situation which makes it necessary cannot last. But you don't need to melt coins to appreciate or capitalize on their bullion value! In fact, I feel it would be foolish to melt pennies because they have already been processed into a "higher" form than ingot. It would be a waste of energy to melt them into a lower form.

There is already a market developing for sorted pre-1982 copper pennies that acknowledges their bullion value. (currently about 2 cents each) What's REALLY interesting is that people over at the hoarding pennies forum (already referenced in the first post on this thread) have been sorting and reporting copper percentages from bulk coins in different areas of the country, and the percentages vary rather widely, but seem to average about 20%. The unanswered question is whether (a) the Fed is gleaning the copper out of the money supply, or (b) whether they've really made four times as many pennies between 1982 and today as between 1959 and 1982, or (c) whether the dwindling supply is due to people like us squirreling them away. I guess we could answer (b) by adding up mintages from the red book. But all that copper is going SOMEwhere!

 

Well Satoot - I guess you called me on the carpet. I honestly don't have the time to waste to look it up if it does indeed exist - nor do I honestly even care. I've always grown up that it's wrong to destroy money and I have to believe somewhere in the lawbooks - if not enforced that it is illegal to do so to some capacity. Even the guys at the metal collection won't take the copper pennies - they're scared to destroy them and those backwater hillbillies will do just about anything. So if you want to go destroy your money (LEGALLY)- be my guest! You totally missed the point of my message if all you're worried about is the wording of the law.

Tom - Excellent points! An old coin dealer told me to save the copper pennies - preferably the BU ones. He said they are going to slowly disappear and like other readers have mentioned in earlier postings - it will be similar to silver. I like what you say about NOT melting the pennies - they're already in a state that is acceptable. I don't like to see any of my precious coins be destroyed unless it is worn to nothing or badly corroded etc. You never know, in 5,000 years there could be 50 billion people living within the solar system and those junky old coppers we have today, those future people may wish to say, wow look at this old piece of history I'm holding! I'm so glad some idiot didn't melt these for bullion! lol

Take Care -
Esky

 

Yes, it is interesting that copper is now dropping out of circulation, with the US, UK and the west of europe abandoning it in favour of copper plated steel. I do not think that copper will ever be worth, say $10 an ounce, like silver can be, but it might be a good idea to try and get as many as possible just incase this happens !

 

I am just getting started so please forgive me if this is a dumb question. Are all pennies that are copper in appearance actually copper?