Interesting facts about Pennies, the US CURRENCY

So i got thinking last night......
Pennies- everyone has piles of them and no one likes to carry them around.
They also cost the US more to produce than their face value.
Sure they can be rolled and taken to bank, or spent as a roll, or taken to a coin sorter in town and they take 7-9% of your gross as profit for counting, then you take a ticket to the register and they pay out your total in cash bills.
In general, they are a pain in the butt to deal with but we all have a stash of them.

Also- we all like copper. Pennies are made of copper right? Hmmmm I wonder how many pennies it takes to make a pound. Got wondering if their scrap value was more than the currency value. I'm not suggesting we all go jump on scrapping pennies, thats illegal.... BUT just the thought of such a possibility bothered me. So I typed in pennies on Wikipedia and found that it only takes $1.81 worth of pennies to make a pound. If they were indeed good copper that means their scrap value is at least or close to double the currency value. Very interesting!!!!!! But come to find out, they aren't such a high percentage of copper after all. Older pennies do contain 95% copper but newer ones are 99% Zinc.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_p...eigh_one_pound

Just something I found interesting. Obviously if there was a way to melt them down into bars and pass them off as real copper that could be a profitable business but I guess it doesn't work that way LOL

Again I was NOT suggesting we scrap currency! Just had to research my theory......

Discuss:

Well, I'd like to "scrap" the penny. But not in that way, I s'pose.

Right now, all over the country, people are running pennies through copper sorting machines, hoarding the ones made before 1982 like people did with silver coins in the 60s. I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually see the day when a copper penny is worth over 7 cents in copper...

Right now it is worth almost 3 cents in copper

BUT, enough about pennies... Did anybody here know that ALL US nickels are worth almost 7 cents in copper-nickel?

Ain't it a shame that money is worth less than scrap now? that just sucks!

yeah you need the earlier pennies for the scrap.

People do scrap them?

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Originally Posted by Bigblue12v

People do scrap them?

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No. It's illegal to destroy national currency

I know, but I got the implication that it was done... I guess you meant in theory, for scrap value you would have to use pre-82 coins. I don't plan on doing this by any means, I was just pointing out something I found interesting...

Yeah it is illegal but i bet someone out there is doing it.

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Originally Posted by Focker

Yeah it is illegal but i bet someone out there is doing it.

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I don't think the yards would take the chance of buying copper coins as scrap.

I would hope and assume that if someone were to attempt to sell them as scrap they would melt them down first?

When we were kids people would lay pennies on train tracks and pick them up later as flattened copper pieces, out of sheer novelty nothing else.... ? Not sure what was soo cool about it LOL

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Scrap man

No. It's illegal to destroy national currency

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I got to wondering how the penny press machines get around it...found this.

"IT'S LEGAL!
U.S. Title 18, Chapter 17, Section 331: Prohibits among other things, fraudulent alteration and mutilation of coins. This statue does not, however, prohibit the mutilation of coins if done without fraudulent intent if the mutilated coins are not used fraudulently."

http://www.rockyrockholt.com/

Suppose melting them down constitutes fraud?

No worries here, nothing hot enough to melt them.

Right now, Canada has a program called the "Alloy Recovery Program" in which all banks are required by law to pull all old nickels and pennies out of circulation so they can scrap them.

In canada, all pre-1982 Nickels are made of 100% nickel. Their nickel value is about $.12 (USD) each.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mick

I don't think the yards would take the chance of buying copper coins as scrap.

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Sure they would if you melted them down how would they know what they where?

http://www.coinflation.com/ This tell what they are worth melted.But as of Dec 2006 it is illegal to melt down pennies and nickels.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TheIrrationalist

Right now, Canada has a program called the "Alloy Recovery Program" in which all banks are required by law to pull all old nickels and pennies out of circulation so they can scrap them.

In canada, all pre-1982 Nickels are made of 100% nickel. Their nickel value is about $.12 (USD) each.

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So nickels are worth something too? Or is that Canadian currency?

so if you took a load of pre-1982 us pennies to canada for scrap would they buy them?

thats an interesting question, im sure there is a legislation somewhere that protects foreign currency on international ground.

...still makes me wonder

I have been wondering he same thing. Up here our pre-82 pennies are 98% copper. Wonder what would happen if a pile of them ended up in another country, would it be legal to melt them down...I'm sure if they ended up in China or India they would be thrown straight into the furnace....or maybe used to pay for months of wages.

I was thinking about collecting pre 1982 pennies and pre 1964 silver coins and get on Craigslist and see if there is a buyer. Also put a Wanted ad on there and pay them bills for there change they saved that hasnt been gone through

I have a good friend in a state somewhere around mine that melts pennies. Yes, it's wrong, blah blah blah. He's not selling the copper, just hoarding it. He's a tinkerer. He built a "smelter" by using mirrors and the sun (basically).

Id never do it. I raise enough hell around here that i don't need to add destroying currency to the list lol. But it is interesting to watch him work. I have a hoard of pennies now, just fun to check your dates at the end of the day and throw the pre-'82 in a bucket. I used to purchase them by the $25 box from the bank. It worked at first because they would get their money from, basically, a huge building that all the "Money trucks" would go to if that makes sense. All the armored trucks that collect money from business's drop the money off at this place. They then redistribute the money to banks and other places. Don't know exactly how it works, that's just my guess. Anyway, i was buying from the bank, and it was great. Simply because all the pennies were circulated pennies. But something happened and they switched to all new pennies. Bought 3 boxes and they were all new.

Was fun while it lasted haha.

Don't get caught even watching this.

Here is the Rule (not Law - the U.S. Mint does not have the authority to write laws, only Congress can do that) http://www.usmint.gov/downloads/cons...sterNotice.pdf

Basically, it is legal to do whatever you want with U.S. coins - any U.S. coins - unless you are attempting to commit fraud. You can melt them, deface them, mark on them, poop on them - anything. There is just one exception, as spelled out in the rule listed above. You can't melt pennies or nickels for their metal value. 5 years in prison and/or $10,000 fine for doing so. You cannot carry on your person more than $5 of pennies or nickels out of the country. You can't ship more than $100 of pennies or nickels out of the country unless doing so for bona fide reasons (not melting).

Personally, I hoard pre-1982 pennies and silver nickels from World War II. I don't believe in all the end-of-the-world TSHTF garbage - but I do believe that our monetary system will collapse. The U.S. debt is so high the only way we'll ever be able to repay it is if our currency goes through hyperinflation.

145 pennies to a pound. Based on current price of copper, you will make a nice profit for each pound of pennies you set aside. The last year for copper pennies was 1982. About 75% of them were copper, the other 25% zinc. You can tell the difference by using a cheap digital scale. Copper pennies weigh around 3.11 grams whereas zinc pennies weigh around 2. 56 grams.

I have one 5 gallon bucket full so far. For each $100 of pennies I go through, I set aside around $20 - $30 in copper pennies. The day will come when coins are no longer minted and you can cash in.

There are machines out there that can sort 10,000 pennies an hour. The difference in conductivity ( I think) separates the zinc pennies from the copper ones. There are two limitations however. The machine costs over $500 though. It doesnt take long to sort through a $25 box of pennies. I have found two Indian head pennies and wheat cents also.

There are certainly people hoarding (by the ton) nickels. Not sure about international laws covering currency protection, but a friend of a friend has taken pennies (UK) to France and had them bought as scrap.

I know a few countries have replaced their coinage to avoid this, I was in NZ when they converted. Hell, in NZ the smallest coin is now 10c.

A few points to update this old thread (which contained comments on both pennies and nickels):

There is a type of U.S. nickel that is legal to melt down and that is the 35% war nickels made from 1942 (some contained silver- some didn't) to 1945.

Canada stopped minting pennies in 2012. They made one that year referred to as the Farewell Penny. It is pretty difficult to find Canadian pennies in Canada now. It isn't all that hard to find them occasionally in the U.S., however.

The Canadian nickels from 1981 and before are 99.9% nickel. The U.S. nickels, in spite of the name, are only 25% nickel with the other 75% being copper. If you can get some Canadian .999 nickels for a decent price, I would set aside those before I would set aside U.S. nickels (even though I'm a U.S. citizen.

A wealthy hedge fund billionaire by the name of Kyle Bass once bought a million dollars in U.S. nickels. That is 20 million coins and, if my math is right, weighs a whopping 210,000 lbs. He called his local bank and eventually got hooked up with the Federal Reserve. They asked why he wanted so many and he replied "I just like nickels." So he had them delivered by Brinks to a vault in downtown Dallas. I wonder if he ever tried to buy Canadian nickels instead, which are a far better investment IMHO.

Back to pennies:

Approximately 60-65% of the copper mined annually in the U.S. comes from just one state- Arizona. So, even if you've never been there, that old coin you hold in your hand may have copper that came from there.

Pennies are so cheap now that there are plenty of people who have done all kinds of artistic things with them, from covering wet bars to flooring and even pictures made completely of pennies.

Pennies are something you could store in decent quantity as a potential burglary deterrent. If someone breaks into your house and looks for high end stuff only to find a 5-gallon bucket of pennies, they may get a bit demoralized and go elsewhere. I keep buckets on hand just for that reason. The really good stuff that I have is stored off site.

The Lincoln penny, which has been minted for 109 years now, is the oldest series with the mint mark always on the front (obverse side) of the coin. This makes it easier for collectors to go through lots of coins quickly. Note that there are other coins which in the past several decades have had the mint marks moved from the back to the front (Jefferson nickels, Roosevelt dimes, Washington quarters, and Kennedy Halves).

What is the most valuable penny I've ever seen? There was a 1943 U.S. penny that for that one year was made of steel (because copper was needed for World War II supplies). By mistake, they made just perhaps 10-20 or so that were accidentally made of copper instead of steel that year. And, the following year (1944), they made another very small batch that were accidentally steel instead of copper. Each is worth in excess of $1 million. I saw both of them on display many years ago at a coin show. There were two armed guards standing around the case.