Pre 1982 Pennies

They’re 95% copper and 5% zinc. Weight 0.11 ounce, allowing for wear 10 cents to an ounce, you need roughly 169 cents to get a pound of copper.

Why would pre-1982 pennies be valuable? How valuable are we talking?

Scrap copper. British “copper” coins moved from bronze to copper-plated steel back in 1992, and there was the same rush to hoard the older coins, using a magnet to weed out the steel ones.

Pure copper price is about $3.30 now, I don’t know what the scrappers pay in the US, but in the UK it’s about $2.50 a pound for 98% pure copper. So assuming you’d get paid $2.40 for your 95% copper coins there’s a margin of 65 to 70 cents.

My husband has been collecting 1980 and earlier pennies for their copper content from before I knew him (over 25 years). Should I tell him that his time has come? Or perhaps the ROI isn’t there yet?

🙂

The UK government prohibits the melting of any coin “which is, or has been, current in the United Kingdom after 16th May 1969 (on that day, Parliament approved the Decimal Currency Act).”  The currency went decimal on 15 February 1971, so that ruling covers every British coin except groats, angels, nobles, farthings, half-farthings, quarter-farthings and anything them Romans left behind. Bizarrely the ruling doesn’t seem to cover gold sovereigns, because although they’re minted every year they’re not legal tender.

Metal hounds are so interesting to me.

So a US penny is worth 1-cent. How much copper is it worth if you could recycle it?

$2.40 divided by 169=1.42 cents. That’s an estimate based on a guess at the scrap price taking into account the 95% purity of the coin.

I have not been posting but still browse and saw this come up…

An ambitious individual could buy a couple of Ryedale coin sorters, order pennies in bulk from banks, they come in $50 boxes, run them through the machines and sell as “unsearched copper pennies” by the pound on ebay. Any non coppers could be redeposited at another bank. Rinse and repeat.

Would you go crazy with the sound of plink plink plink plink for hours on end, absolutely! Could you make a nice return on your money invested with basically zero risk, yup….

Here’s a guy doing some volume, 30 bucks of pennies selling for $84 plus shipping…

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1909-1982-US-Pennies-20-pounds-copper-pennies-unsearched-Copper-Penni/333640335717?hash=item4dae838165:g:BMcAAOSwmcRejzVK

Happy holidays all!

Antique Frog, you can use a coin sorting machine. There is a slot where you put an example coin, say a newer zinc based penny , load up the hopper on top with pennies and the machine will separate the newer from the older copper based coins by spitting them out two different shoots. It does that incredibly quickly.  A few videos out there on youtube for “Ryedale penny sorting”

Interesting- looks like it can handle different denominations of coins, as it compares against a sample. Here in the UK the copper coinage went to copper-plated steel, so coin hoarders just use a magnet.

My first thought was not that people are buying copper pennies in hopes of someday being able to melt them down, but to make countertops, backsplashes, floors etc. using pennies and resin. Maybe it looks nicer with the real copper pennies.

Seen photos of a couple of cars done that way- one with pre-decimal pennies and the other with cents.

Pre-1982 pennies are also valued by people that collect smashed or elongated pennies. The newer pennies smear when put through the machine so you get this unpleasant silver streaking marring the pattern. Earlier pennies look better as they have a more uniform color when squashed. I keep a stash of early pennies for when I go on vacation to get a cheap souvenir. Squashed pennies are also collectible and can be sold – as always the earlier and rarer the better. Some command quite a bit of cash.

The hoarding of copper pennies is an example of Gresham’s Law.

per Wikipedia:

In economics, Gresham’s law is a monetary principle stating that “bad money drives out good”. For example, if there are two forms of commodity money in circulation, which are accepted by law as having similar face value, the more valuable commodity will gradually disappear from circulation.

There are other issues at work here.

1. National coin shortage

2. Talk of pennies being eliminated from minting.

I have a few hundred pounds of copper pennies hidden away. I have a Ryedale sorter. I have not done it in a while, but I would get 20-25% copper coins per box of pennies. I would buy a couple 25 dollar boxes of pennies from one bank, sort them, and return them at another bank. (I opened an account at a bank with a coin counter at 6 local branches to spread out the returns) besides getting copper, I would find 5 or 10 wheat pennies per box, and once in a while an Indian head penny. Sometimes a rare penny would show up. I was selling 10 dollars worth of coppers for 17 dollars plus shipping. I could go on but I don’t want to bore anyone. The beauty of it is I’m not really losing much by having them sit there, and I can always return them if I need he money…

Yeah this definitely says “hobby” to me much more than “profitable business venture”.

Kinda like doing all those crazy chemical processes to strip gold from old electronics.

Hoover up road dirt- there’s 6 grams of platinum in every ton. Alternatively, go straight for the source and remove catalytic convertors from parked cars. According to the police it takes a skilled thief less than a minute to cut one off.