Well, I'm sure glad I decided to look through my 200 lbs of copper cents...

I've been filling up a 5-gallon glass water jar with pre-1982 copper cents for a few years now. Mostly, I just wanted to see how many cents it would take - but now that I've decided to move on and get rid of something that's too heavy for me to pick up, tonight was the night to package it all up and get it prepped for an auction.

Took me three USPS Priority Mail Medium Flat Rate boxes (66 pounds of cents in each box) to empty the jar. About $300 face value worth of cents in there.

As I was going through it, I started to find some additional copper coins I'd thrown in there. Most of them were commonly seen 1800's world coins (like those Spanish 5 Centimos, Mexican Centavos, French Centimes...etc...plus some Canadian Large Cents.)

Best coin I threw in here (not sure why I did it, but I'm glad I found it again) was this 1858 Canadian large cent:

 

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It's always fun to find coins you forgot you had.

 

Especially key dates.

 

auction site?

 

Well, I want to be respectful of the forum rules (not posting B/S/T offers/info outside the B/S/T section) so I'll just say two things:

1) I post auction links in the Auction Listings forum when I have them, so I'd keep an eye on that

2) Due to high shipping costs, these will be put into a live only auction. If you would like more info, feel free to PM me.

(Talking about the auction wasn't my original goal, it was just sort of mentioned for context. There is no intent to violate forum rules here.)

 

That is a total of 198 pounds.. you kept the extra 2 pounds? Or that's the total weight of non US Cents you found?

 

Wow, sweet!



Thanks,
Jacob

 

Just rounding up is all. Note that I said “about $300” - so it’s about 200 pounds as well.

 

Now that's a coin jar!

 

I started it as an homage to my grandmother's penny jar (yes, I know the US doesn't make "pennies" but that's what she called it.) When I was little, my mom would bring me over to grandma's house and while they talked in the kitchen, grandma used to dump out a pile of cents on her carpet. I'd sit there for hours quietly sorting, stacking, arranging the coins.

I don't remember ever, ever finding any keys or semi-keys (even when I went through her collection a couple years ago because my aunt/uncle asked me to sell it for her) and I remember thinking that was odd. I thought, "but couldn't she just go buy the ones that were missing so I could complete the set?"

Because key date Lincoln Wheaties are pretty reasonable /s

 

Nice find!

 

Nice VG find in the bottom of your jar, $80.00 Canadian is not a bad find at all.
Make sure to check the 5 for doubling as the price goes up.

 

Nice if you like that stuff.

 

Yep. That's a lot of cents.

2,000,000 wheat cents /100 = $20,000 Face Value
2,000,000 wheat cents x $.05/coin = $100,000,000,000,000 Street Value

(Edited my math...but not in a correct way. Thanks to those who pointed out my error. Distracted calculations is all I gotta say.)

 

Watch your decimal places

 

20K times 5 is 100K not a million.
Like that 19th century Canadian large cent.
HOW COULD YOU THROW THAT IN A JAR?

 

You are very correct, sir. My luck to try to do math while a girl talks to me. Sheesh.

 

Yep, got it. (re: math)

And, if I remember correctly, and this was years ago when I started (because it was on the bottom of the pile) was that I wanted to leave a surprise for myself (not just fill it with common copper cents.)

Surprise landed.

 

Yeah, girls mess up everything. Did I mention I have a wife and 2 daughters?