Good Bye Pennies 1981 and before

I heard that the price of copper because of demand has surpassed the amount of the value of one cent. 1981 and before pennies are 95% copper and I don't know if I'm correct, but one pound of pennies is about 135 coins - and one pound of melted copper bullion is going for $1.79 - (Can anyone verify this?) ... If this is so, say good bye to pennies from 1981 and before as a profit of $.44+/pound should start having MANY avid people sorting through these pennies and selling them or melting them for a quick buck. This would seem to be good for the US government as well if this is the case too because with the money destroyed (Which I thought there was a law you couldn't destroy money?) - they will need to reissue more coins and the whole process is beneficial economically and to the mint that produces the coins. Not to mention all of our collectable Lincoln Cents will go up in value as well with the diminished amount. This must be quite the same feeling as in 1959 when the penny changed from Wheatback to the Lincoln Memorial reverse.... If the price of copper continues to rise, we'll be talking about the days when one could get a copper penny! Any info or replies to the correctness of this post would be much appreciated. I don't claim to be an expert and this is only what I heard, but it did make sense.

Thanks - Esky

 

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I agree with you in principle. I doubt copper pennies will ever become as sought after as say silver quarters, but there was a reason the switch was made from a copper based cent to a zinc coin in 1982. Accordingly, more and more people will hoard cents as copper goes up in value.

 

This may be a bit off topic, but anyone know how easy/economical it is to melt silver/copper coins? I have a buddy who came to me asking how to do it and I honerstly do not know anything about it. Thanks .

Ryan

 

I can't profess to be an expert in melting stuff, but I remember my father melting lead for my pinewood derby car back in the 1970s ... All he did was take sort of cast iron pan of some sorts and put it over a little gas cook stove. Now I'm not a chemist and lead is probably easier to melt than copper, but I don't think it'd be that hard to do? I think the metals melt very easy and any heat source under iron would do. But - don't hold me to it please.

Esky

 

I think your right, lead melts easily, years ago I used to fix machines at brewerys and some of the older crude machines had lead bearings which due to the softness of lead had to be replaced often. We just melted the lead with an acyetelene torch in a cast pot. Then we would pour the lead into the bearing cavity and hold in place with what was called elephant sh-t, yah thats what it looked like. I dont think melting copper or silver would require anything more than a pot and a torch.

 

Well, my friend has looked into a melting furnace for about $250, but is not entirely sure how to seperate the materials. I couldn't tell him if he could use the different melting temps or if he needed to complete a chemical process first. Luckily one of my buddies is a Chemistry major and he said he would write him a reaction. But, I was just curious if anyone had any ideas or experience doing this kind of thing. Thanks for all of the replies. I may get in on this project if it looks feasible.
EDIT: BTW, kitco has copper prices at $2.25 /lb if I read it correctly. Is $1.44/lb their buy price or did you get that quote elsewhere?
Ryan

 

I just heard some guys talking and that's what they said - no proof or anything like that but it sure peaked my curiosity.


GDJMSP - I like your idea of bringing them to a metal scrapyard - I have a question though? Are they going to look at you like you're nuts when you show up with a ton of old pennies? Will they most likely be trusting enough that the person bringing them is bringing legit pennies? I guess what I'm asking is, WILL they most likely know what to do? I'd love to do this, but I am scared they'll look at me like I'm weird or something?? But if there is a proft in turning over the old pennies.... By gosh - we should follow the American way right? Actually I'd use my profits to try and afford an 1909 S VDB ... any advice or help you can give from your experience would be greatly appreciated

Esky

 

Am I missing something? At a profit of .44 a pound doesn't it seem like a waste of time hoarding pennies to bring into a metal scrapyard? I mean that's a lot of work - the weight alone to make it worthwhile should be interesting. Do you go buy them at the bank and then sort them to make sure that they're all before 1981?

 

I believe that the spot metal prices are for pure alloy. Something like large gauge copper wiring would qualify, and thats why it is occasionally stolen. I would think that cents with their small amounts of other metals and almost no copper content after 1982 would make a chore of seperating and smelting. The amount of labor involved would probably factor the cost of producing the copper alloy out of cents below the face value of the coin. The cost at which it is economical to melt down coins into ingots is still higher that the present day price per pound. Lange goes over this in The Complete Guide to Lincoln Cents.

 

I believe that there are approximately 145 pre-1982 cents to the pound.
We must also keep in mind that these coins are made of bronze, not copper.
Unless you are in a position to refine metal, your only realistic alternative is to sell your coins to a scrap metal recycling yard.
Call around, and get price quotes for scrap bronze.
I would be interested to know how many are even interested in buying it.

FWIW, here is the current market price for copper...

http://www.i2tradeservice.com/copper_pricing/index.html

I didn't have any luck finding a market price for bronze, although there are firms that will buy it.

 

Chances are that any scrap dealer who knows the metallic content difference between 1940, 1943, 1980 and 1990 cents wouldn't consider buying them by weight because of the humungous cost of the labor to verify exactly what was in the bag, box, bucket or other container offered.

It certainly wouldn't be as easy as the magnets over a conveyor belt which separate tin (plated steel) cans from aluminum cans.

 

I don't think normal people would ever go through the trouble to melt down a few pennies for the copper price. However, I've met a few electricians that have admitted convesgating all the copper wiring from demolition projects and along with the pennies melting them down in a small man made furnace made of think steel garbage cans. Occational Aluminum, Zinc, etc that would get into the mess made little difference since they were getting bulk rate for something the didn't pay for except the pennies. They had no interest in coin values, just copper and other metals. They would sell the settled out blobs to metal recyclers. At one project being built I worked on a 17,000 foot roll of #4/0 grounding copper vanished. Copper grounding for fences must be done on the inside of the fence or it too will vanish. As to the copper coins being melted down, I don't think to many people will go through the trouble of trying to acquire enough to melt down for a metal sale profit. However, there are those.......

 

Indeed. There are probably some of them right here on this forum. Or at least a few who are going to take a few rolls of cents to the scale in the Post Office to resolve the disagreement we're having in this thread about how many cents are in a pound.

 

That won't solve anything. The problem with estimating the number of cents in a pound arises from the mix of weights:

• Wheaties (except steel ones) weigh 3.11g
• Steel wheaties weigh 2.70g
• Bronze Memorials also weigh 3.11g
• Copper plated zinc Memorials weigh 2.5g

One pound (16-ounce common avoirdupois measure) contains 454g, so simple conversion math (and rounding) tells us that Bronze wheaties and Memorials run 146 to the pound, steel cents run 168+ to the pound, and there are 186 current cents in that same pound.

A pound of randomly selected cents therefore must contain at least 146 coins, and cannot consist of more than 186.*

*The difference in weight between an MS70 and a P0 is so minimal that it probably wouldn't affect the count by more than 1, so maybe the upper limit should be considered 187. ​

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There's probably a better market for them as they are. People who squish cents want the copper vs zinc because of the quality. Then there's the wheaties thing. You can get 4 to 5 cents a piece for them at most coin club meetings/shows.

 

The copper in the pre-1982 cents is worth more than 1¢, but it will have to appreciate quite a bit more for it to be economically feasible to consider smelting cents down for their copper.

 

Why do people recycle aluminum? I used to recycle aluminum back when it was 10 cents a pound. I don't know the current price, last time I sold any it was 60 cents a pound, but it still probably takes several hundrd pounds to make it worthwhile to make the trip to the recycler. And that give you another problem which copper doesn't have. Even crushed, several hundred pounds of aluminum cans can take a step van to transport because of the bulk. Several hundred pounds of copper cents can be put in the trunk of the car.