A copper penny saved is more than a penny earned.

This issue has probably been addressed already, but here it goes.

I’ve been saving pre-Regan era pennies for many years now. U.S. minted coins before 1981 weigh 2.5 grams and contain 95.5% copper. Canadian pennies minted between 1942 and 1979 weigh 3.24 grams and contain 98% copper. Copper Canadian pennies from 1980 and 1981 weighed 2.8 grams and ones from 1982 to 1996 weighed the same as U.S. pennies at 2.5 grams.

Right now copper prices have reached an all time high (like gold) of around $4.25 per pound and it is being hoarded by investors (also like gold).

See this Wall Street Journal Article

online.wsj.com...

1 Pound = 453.5923 Grams or 181.44 Copper Pennies Per Pound (three 50 cent rolls + 32 cents).
This means that a U.S. minted, solid copper penny is actually now worth roughly 2.34 cents.
Canadian pennies minted between 1942 and 1979 are now worth 3.03 cents.

So investing in copper pennies can have over 2 to 3 times their face value. We should be getting everything we buy with copper pennies at a 50% to 75% discount. In my opinion, copper pennies will be a valuable currency to use after the fall of the Federal Reserve note. Also, think about all the copper the military uses in its ammo. The cashiers wouldn’t be complaining about counting pennies once dollars are about worthless!

P.S. Hold on to those nickels too, they’re 75 percent copper and 25 percent nickel, and weigh 5 grams.

In all honesty I think it's unfortunate because this type of practice speeds up the prospect of a cashless society because making money costs more than money itself. (Canadian mint employees who lovingly wrap each roll of pennies don't help either, as I, who has a big bag of coin money)

Like in Canada they're about to cut the penny. Next it will be nickels then dimes, maybe quarters too, and after it's all too much trouble they'll cut coin cash alltogether.

There's many translations but one of them is:

"And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. "

Actually, I've begun saving all the US pennies I find that were minted pre-1982 for a while.
It seems there is more to find in just circulation alone.

Check your change people:
It's worth it!

Thought I say that the penny, ours or Canada's, cannot legally be melted down or sold for scrap. My idea is that it would make a valuable currency when the Federal Reserve Notes go for a nose dive. The copper penny has more value as a commodity and that will be what makes it worth using as a currency.

It's against the law to mock the state by selling its monopoly currency for melt value.


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


You just tongue-in-cheeked exactly what I was thinking here. I don't believe youd be able to legally find any smelter/recycler who would be able to render the copper out of the pennies and to amass the equipment to melt them down to blanks yourself would be prohibitively expensive unless you were sitting on a huge stock of pennies.

The price of copper today is incredible. When I was a kid growing up just a half an hour away from the Santa Rita copper pit in New Mexico, you could find 5lb copper blisters at flea markets and rock shops for $2.50 apiece. These were about 75% pure copper. They shut the majority of the mine down in the late 90's because copper prices had flat out died. At the same time, Arizona enacted a law requiring a certain percentage of new building construction use Arizona mined copper (wiring, plumbing, etc) to protect their mining towns from dying out like the NM bootheel towns built around Phelps Dodge's little copper racket did following the closure of PD's smelter & virtual closure of the mine itself.

I'm by no means a tree hugger, but it sickens me to see what PD did to the land there. Whatever the price of copper reaches, it will never be enough to justify the destruction and raping of the Gila wilderness. A hell of a lot of folks became extremely wealthy thanks to that mine, but not a damn one of them lived in the area affected by it.

Another thing I'd though I'd mention. Coins sold for collector value end up selling at about the market value of the metal they contain. That's the loop-hole that can be used to help get your money's worth out of your pennies. I'll take $2.30 in zinc pennies for my dollar of copper ones and put them through the change machine or make my bank take them.