Advice - Bucket of Coins 60s 70s 80s

Hi, I’m new here, thank you for letting me join. I’m looking for some advice. My father collected his change which has resulted in a 5 gallon bucket of mostly pennies with some nickels and dimes. Best I can tell most of the pennies are from the 60s-80s. Some of the pennies are in near mint condition.

Im looking for advice on what to do with all of this change. It’s so much of it I don’t even know where to start. Is it even worth my time and effort to go through it? What would you do? Thanks!

 

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Purchase a red book of United States Coins to get an idea of their worth and start picking through them. It would be a shame to take them to the bank because you could be turning in coins worth dollars. Even the 1981 and older pennies are worth 1.7 cents. You never know what you have there till you search through them. Have fun!

 

THEY ARE NOT! The pre-82 pennies are a copper alloy, and as such are only worth about 25% of the price for Grade A Copper.

Get your facts straight and quit advising people when you don't know what you are talking about. ~ Chris

 

$0.0184856 is the melt value for the 1909-1982 copper cent on January 10, 2020.

 

Welcome to the neighborhood @J Tuttle !

Take your time. You're not going to learn how to grade or identify errors & varieties overnight. It's a long, slow process. Be sure to ask plenty of questions, here, and post good, clear photos of both sides of a coin whenever possible. Also, try to stay away from YouTube (BoobTube). It is full of misinformation. ~ Chris

 

When was the last time you called all of the reclamation centers in your area and asked for a quote on copper alloy? I'll bet you never have! ~ Chris

 

I got info here.
http://www.coinflation.com/coins/1909-1982-Lincoln-Cent-Penny-Value.html.
Sorry if it does not meet your standards.

 

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Find your nearest Coinstar machine and don't look back and wonder.

 

Don't forget to check the reject bin on that Coinstar machine. That has been the source of several silver dimes and quarters over the past couple of years for me.

 

It would depend on if you have an interest in coins or not. It will take some of your time and there may, or may not be value. For me, a 5 gallon bucket of unknowns would be like Santa dropping a gift in my lap as I greatly enjoy coins.

 

@alurid is right that the value of copper in a pre-1982 cent is 1.8 cents, if you had that copper already purified.

@cpm9ball is right that you can't just sell cents to a refiner and get that much money. They pay less for impure copper, and cents are impure copper. Besides, it's currently illegal to melt cents or nickels (except war nickels). This is a law that was passed when copper prices spiked (back around 2006?); as far as I know, it hasn't been repealed.

Having said that, you can get close to "melt value" if you sell a large lot of copper cents on eBay. There are lots of people who think of copper cents in terms of melt value; whether they don't know about the costs and caveats, or don't care, there are enough of them to form a market.

You may get even more if you play up the "unsearched" and "old accumulation" aspects of the hoard. If they were saved from circulation, they surely have been searched multiple times along the way, but that's not what "unsearched" means on eBay these days.

If you do decide to go the eBay route, Priority Mail Flat Rate shipping is your friend. You can get many, many pounds of cents into a medium flat-rate box that will ship for well under $20. For your own time and sanity, and to minimize shipping costs, sell them as a few large lots rather than many smaller ones.

I'm facing a similar situation myself, with a hoard a friend inherited from her father. It's not as large as yours, and it's got several dozen rolls of cents, mostly from the 1960s. I searched a few of the rolls, and decided it was more work than fun. I expect I'll list the lot of them in a single auction, explaining what I found in the ones I did check, and let them bring what they bring.

In your case, I'd at least go through, put the cents into bags, and set the nickels and dimes aside for further attention. If the dimes are all 1965 or later (non-silver), spend them, unless some of the oldest ones are really nice. Same for nickels, probably.

Dumping the lot into a CoinStar may be the fastest route, but I couldn't bring myself to accept 11% below face value for a lot like this. I'd spend the rest of my days feeding them into self-checkout stations first.

Good luck with whatever you decide, and welcome to CoinTalk!

 

I have been stuck behind that guy at the grocery store on multiple occasions.

 

It's not my standards! It's reality! Yeah, you go online, but you don't bother making phone calls to get quotes from the firms that actually pay for it. Tell those imbeciles at Coinflation that you'll sell them all the 1959-1981 pennies that they can handle for 1.5c each and see what they say. Do everyone a favor and stop quoting information that you haven't taken the time to verify. ~ Chris

 

Calm down. I got my info from www.coinflation.com

 

Why would you when you can't melt them anyway, yet.

 

We have enough problems dealing with people coming here from BoobTube with the misinformation they receive. We don't need people, here, giving out misinformation. ~ Chris

 

Not misinformation though.

 

You really don't do yourself, this forum or the hobby any service with childish posts such as this one. Resorting to name calling and bullying will just drive people away from you and from this forum. Regardless of whether the person you're accusing is right or wrong, there are other far more productive ways to handle such situations.

 

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Here is a site you can check melt value of all coins
http://coinapps.com/copper/penny/calculator