Don't go melting your coins!

Welcome to CoinTalk. You started with a great question. I am not aware of any law against melting. The US Mint doesn't have the authority to pass laws, and their "regulations" may or may not have the force of law depending on whether they intend to take the case to court and depending on how a judge and jury rules. I am not aware of any such cases recently so I don't know if the Mint is bluffing or if they have some legal tricks up their sleeves.

 

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This the one?


http://usmint.gov/pressroom/index.cfm?action=press_release&ID=724

 

It looks like a regulation, not a law passed by a legislative body.

 

US can still melt Canadian coins and they kept the copper and nickel in them longer!

 

I assume that 1982 and lower date cents are made of mostly copper.is this correct?

 

0What does it cost on average to melt 20lbs of cents. Also, who would do it. Saw how beautiful a 13lb bar of copper can be when it's polished .

 

Si...:smile

 

1. If you melt down any coins and take the blob of metal to a metal recycler, do you think they'ld say "OH, look. Used to be coins"
2. Do you think that any metal recyclers have or care about those laws?
3. If you melt down your own coins, you could be using the metal to make jewlery, knives and/or swords. Imagine a Gold Sword with a Silver handle and a Copper scabbord.
4. It's a good thing they have such laws. Now they will arrest all those criminals that do melt coins. They have laws against home invasions, murder, rape, auto theft and on and on and on and you can see how well that works.
5. Jewlers have been melting down coins for thier buisness for many, many years. Look at the rings on your and/or your wife's fingers and see if you can tell if that was ever a Coin.
6. Electricians around here take waste Copper wires to metal recyclers and throw in piles of pennies all the time. Never saw a Penny Police person watching.
Just a guess but I would suspect that about 70% or much more coins have been melted, thrown in Rivers/Lakes/Ponds, smashed with hammers for fun, pressed into something like the ones at the Zoos, placed on RR tracks, buried and on and on and on.
Of course there are mountains of coins in the bank vaults, personal hoards in someone's basement, The Federal Researve, bottom of the Ocean, collectors Albums and one dealer I see at all the coin shows.

 

Hm....try 5 hours in a convection oven at 1981.4 °F (1983 °F if you want to save time)

 

I looked at the U.S. Mint's website and the Federal Register online and there was no mention of this regulation. I searched the entire month of Dec 2006 and Jan 2007.

One cent pieces minted 1864-1982 were 95% copper and either 5% Zinc making them brass or had 5% Tin/Zinc making them bronze. The copper alone Friday 24 July made them worth 1.4 cents each. That is a good return on saving your pennies. I found a dozen or so pre 1982 pennies in the three dollars worth that i spent to buy silver the other day.

Chris

 

Here is the actual regulation as printed in the Federal Register. Yes it is a Treasury Regulation but it does have the force of law. At least they enforce them as if they were laws. We elect officials to represent us and pass needed legislation, and they give the power to UNELECTED officials to pass their own regulations and give them the force of law

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2760981/R...n-melting-or-treatment-prohibition-Correction

 

Thanks. I can see where the melting of coins on an industrial scale could become disruptive, and the regulation would probably discourage businesses from making this a common practice.

 

I am in the scrap metal business and we have never had one cent pieces come in with scrap copper. I wouldn't buy it anyway - to much time involved culling out post 1982 cents before weighing the coins purchased. Plus recyclers pay well below board price for scrap copper anyway.

Addressing the issue of refining US nickels and cents- those that were responsible for the majority of melting didn't bother with refinning. US coinage is manufactured at such strict tolerance they were being dumped, as is, straight into the melt pot in the production of alloys. Pure ingots of other metals were added as needed to adjust the mix.

 

Thanks for the reference Conder101. I have been going day by day through 2007 to try and find it. You just saved me looking through 6 months worth of the Federal Register.

I was planning on culling it by year and selling the pennies as what they were either brass or bronze. So back to my original plan. They are going to make great bullets for my target rifle.

Sno