Penny Hoarding

this is what i do with my pennys (cents) :hail:

 

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:thumb:Folks have been saying Copper is the new Silver!
but I do keep any copper cent in EF or better in one bag.culls in a bucket

 

:smile i agree with jello :smile

 

I have a 5 gallon Hinckley and Schmidt bottle from a water cooler that I have been tossing my cents into since 1995. It's almost 3/4 full. I figure that's about $200 in pennies.

I started doing it because people would just throw them away and toss them on the ground. I knew that they weren't worth much, but if I could accumulate enough of them, they would be something. I have never known the difference between having them in my pocket to spend and not having them to spend.

I think that the estimate by jcakcoin before was conservative as I know of many other cent hoarders who have as many as myself or more.

I do plan on seperating the copper from the zinc, but if and only if and when they legalize their melting.

 

I've been searching them for awhile now and been fortunate not only to find some extremely scarce varieties, but to make a really good friend out of it. He has taught me a lot about cents and is one of the leading contributors to the "world" of cent collecting with several discoveries. To me, that is the real value.

But if you are going to search, there seems no point in not hoarding. I happen to separate by year and mint into reused paper tubes and sort boxes by decade. No way to get rich, but it doesn't deprive the budget much to toss a few dollars of cents aside each week and it starts adding up quickly. First a roll or two, then a box. True, they aren't worth much, but I don't consider it a wasted effort. I already found a 1988 D RDV-006, a few DDO's and RPM's. Some clip planchets, etc. It's a thrill to stumble across something ! I guess what I am trying to say is that it may not be all about the money. Some things are just fun to do. This hobby is one that doesn't cost anything. Sure, you can spend a lot on supplies, coins and stuff, but you don't have to. Some reused plastic jars, a little on-line research learning what to look for, and an effort. Who knows, maybe you will find the next $40,000 cent ? All this at no monetary risk. Doesn't seem to get much better than that. IMHO

gary

 

I do not want to rain on anybody's parade but - pretending US cents were legal to melt

Sure small lots trade on Ebay at a price close to spot but what about giant hoards of these things weighing thousands of lbs. Where are you going to sell them? More than likely at a scrap yard. Call your local scrap yard and iquire what they are paying for copper. You'll probably be quoted a price discounted 15% to 35% off spot. Hoards of US cents -well these present an additional problem. No scrap yard is set up to take them. If you deliver tons of these coins to a scrap yard; do you believe that they will take your word that all the coins delivered are copper cents. No they'll have to sort and verify and it would be an ardious labor intensive task. The volume a scrap yard would do in this type of material would not be great enough or economically viable to invest in specialized sorting equipment to automate the process. I suppose they could probe the load and pull samples similar to the process used for grain. But this process still doesn't seperate the good material from the bad. So this puts an additional middleman in the process. One who buys truckloads of material from scrap yards and therefore has a volume large enough to make an automated sorting process economically viable. Copper prices as they stand now and if cents were legal to melt - I think you would still be lucky to realize a price much over face.

 

Regarding the loss on gold, how did you manage to do that?

Regarding silver, if you take the financial statements for any silver producer and divide the costs on their income statement by the number of ounces produced, I don't think you will find a single company with costs that low. What they probably did is to assume that all of the silver produced by multi-metallic miners was produced for zero cost, which is just bad cost accounting and has nothing to do with reality.

I don't see a single sign of a silver bubble [yet]. There is no widespread public participation, no frenzy, no buying on leverage to turn a quick profit, and the present price is reasonably close to the total cost of production.

 

According to the Nevada Mining Assn, the cost of production of an ounce of Silver is $7.51.
We've seen fluctuations of 25% in just recent months. Demand is off, and you don't see signs of a bubble ? Interesting.

Of course, I remember well the 60's, 70,s, 80s and 90s. Invested in PMs my entire adult life whenever money was available to do so as well as real estate. Markets change and they can do so overnight.

PMs are underfubnded and the market is easily manipulated. a huge sell off, leaves a bunch of guys making margin calls, like we saw in the last couple of weeks. Sure it's good right now, but there are no guarantees. Potential is generally offset with risk. I have made money and taken some big hits. It happens.


Quite easily, I purchased a lot of gold at a point in time and when circumstances required that I sell it, the market was about half of what I paid. There is no guarantee that the price will hold. Just recently we saw silver fall from $40 to $28. Someone buying at 35 and forced to sell at 29 has taken a 20% cash loss. What can I say, it happens with all commodities. You can really get beat up on margin calls, because the leverage can double your exposure. The thing about margin calls is that the stuff can get sold out from under you, even if you make the call. I learned that with stocks, the hard way.

I never bought PMs except to take immediate possession of them. All I can say, is that I am glad I had them when I absolutely had to sell. It kept my family going for a time until I could get things turned around. This is not the first recession I have weathered. There have been at least 3 major downturns in the last 45 years that affected me. A couple of them were tough.

It's a recession when your neighbor cannot find work, it's a depression when you can;t !

 

Regardless of what the Nevada Mining Assn says, if you check the data yourself, you will arrive at a different conclusion. I don't know what agenda they are pushing, but their numbers don't pass the smell test. Frequently, someone will publish a number and it will be copied, and copied, and copied and translated slightly differently at each step until folks don't even recall how the original number was calculated. That's why it pays to check everything you read, especially from industry associations which are biased.

I don't define a bubble as declining demand, and I don't confuse a bull market with a bubble. I know it has become fashionable to call every rise in price a bubble after the business media missed both the Nasdaq bubble and the real estate bubble, but bubbles are relatively rare and it is highly unusual that we had even two of them. Some folks see the present treasury bond interest rate as a bubble, but I have my doubts since there isn't widespread public participation and speculation on margin except for a few hedge funds that specialize in that sort of thing.

 

What I feel is a "bubble" happens whenever something is valued at a lot more than it's costs to produce. I mean if it costs $1 a bushel to grow corn and another $1 to market it it's in a "bubble" when it sells for $7. At some point, demand will force the price back to nearer that $2. We're seeing PMs start the process of adjusting today. There is a probability of a lot more decrease in the over inflated values with banking money moving to crude as Iran threatens to disrupt shipments. Spot prices could fall a lot more as the "short" sellers jump in.

Copper cents, taken from circulation will not go below their cost, period. Have a greater potential for earnings than PM's do right now. I mean, if copper falls to 50c a ton, your cent is still worth a cent, right ?

But your $25 silver may not be worth that in the near future, and your $35 silver is history, it seems. And if you got gold at $1700, I feel your pain.

 

There is a fundamental difference between these two scenarios. The corn in question has to be consumed or processed into something else within a certain amount of time or it rots and becomes worthless. This forces physical delivery and keeps the system relatively honest. In comparison, a bar of gold or silver in a commodities vault doesn't rot or change value in any way relative to time. This means contracts that represent it never have to account for the physical commodity behind it. Hence there is huge temptation and ability to manipulate this market.

 

But it pays off now....you can sell them on ebay for a profit right now....

 

Hi all-

Ok, not to toot my own horn or anything, but I have been a penny/dime/nickel/half sorter for over 5 years now, and I have literally sorted over a million individual cents. I have proof!

That said, I used to sell my pennies as fast as I could sort them, but I started thinking about the potential upside. The thing to remember is how many TIMES your profit increases.

For instance, I know all the arguments about gold/silver over copper, and I agree with all of them- g/s are lighter, more valuable, more recognized, and more liquid. But if you can sell a one cent copper for two cents...you just doubled your money! Not much when you talk about .01c, but try $10,000 in copper cents- now it's $20,000! Pennies have S L O W L Y been creeping up to about 1.5/1.6 times face, I think once we break the psychological barrier of 2 times face and more news stories break about pennies it will be off to the races. If Gold goes from $1600 to $1900, and silver from $30 to $45, these are all GREAT! increases, but they dont even come close to doubling your money-assuming copper cent prices ONLY double...!

I know about all the counter-arguements; the time invested, the money could be used better elsewhere, where will you sell, how will you ship/transport, etc. Believe me, once the melt ban is lifted and prices go up just a little it's game on. The scrappers will be on this game so fast it will make our heads spin. All I know is I have sold thousands of dollars face value of copper pennies and I am now a hoarder.
JMO

wags

 

I look at hoarding older cents in this vane, it is harmless, they are always money so you can cash them in if you have to, and it is instantly profitable. But for me there is a little side thing that has become my main pursuit - finding rares, earlies, errors etc. I have found as early as 1891, most of the Lincoln dates save like the really rare stuff like the '14-D etc. I have found some worth a few dollars, and a couple worth a lot more. I have found 4-5 1909s, including one VDB and even more 1910s. How else can you find 100+ year old coins that are still making it into circulation?