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scrappappy

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 6, 2015
Messages
79
Does anyone else sort Lincoln pennies and Nickels etc from there pocket change and search bank rolls? I started doing it as a way to convert my paper savings into commodities some years ago.

I had been sorting out the newer zinc pennies and only looking from the old copper variety. But now even the zinc versions are worth almost face value. It's 90% of face value today compared to 17% for the dime and Quarter. Copper pennies are still commonly in circulation and worth about 213% of face value. It's currently a very rare occurrence in a fiat world. But probably only around %20 of the pennies currently in circulation are the copper variety. I don't think it will last long before the USA joins Canada in removing the cent/penny from our economic system.

So now I'm starting to set the zinc pennies aside, along with the older copper variety. Something I always saw as junk is now actually economically desirable. I guess inflation must be picking up again. whether they admit it or not.

For all the coin roll hunters and change sorters out there.. do you keep your Zinc pennies and do you think that mineral has a brighter future like copper did before it was replaced by Zinc?
 
I roll hunted when I quit smoking six years ago. I won't do it again....taking a couple five gallon buckets full of zincs in to the bank counting machine was a bit of a pain in the butt.....but the bank employees were always kind about it.


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Im not too sure what the laws are in the US but in the UK it’s illegal to melt coins unless demonetized so be careful about what you do and say regarding scrap values of legal coinage.
Funny thing is I know of someone who melted many many hundreds of kilos and won a queens award for industry by exporting the silver bars... :shock:
 
In the US, it's illegal to melt pennies or nickels, except for the 1942-1945, WWII, war nickels, which have 35% silver in them. I think you can legally melt anything else. This is because, at times, the metal value of the pre-1982 penny or the nickel is worth more than their value as money. At present typical prices, a pre-82 penny contains about 2 cents worth of copper. Recently, the nickel, which weighs 5g and is composed of 75%Cu and 25%Ni, had a metal value of 4.3 cents, with Cu at $3.19/# and Ni at $6.16/#. However, in 2007, taking inflation into consideration. Ni rose to $28/# and the metal value of a nickel was about 10 cents. So, if melting were allowed, there would be no pennies or nickels in circulation. On the other hand, the metal prices would have to get very high before people melted dimes or quarters. If this did happen, I'm sure the government would write new laws and nip melting in the bud.
 
There are more than a few reasons that people in the USA pick up the hobby of coin roll hunting. Typically one starts believing that they could make a fortune culling silver alloy coins from more modern coins made from other metals.

Reality is far different. While it is not uncommon to find a few silver coins for several thousands of dimes, quarters, and halves searched, the costs of moving thousands of pounds of coins from bank to home, and back again, there is no profit involved, only losses.

I, personally, do search for errors. There are many error types, and anyone interested can do an internet search to learn more.

Why errors? They represent a breakdown, however minor, in quality control. An example is die cracks. I am familiar with a collector who has in his personal collection, a group of quarters that show progression of a minor die crack to a complete die break. He has been offered, by other collectors, several thousand dollars for this small part of his collection.

I will admit that the above example is very extreme in terms of value. Most error coins I have sold or traded to collectors have had a value from a few to near 100 dollars. Mostly on the lower end.

To help me recoup the costs involved, I have put together, over several years, a list of collectors and their interests. Mostly I trade for things that interest me, rather than sell them outright.

Do I make anything in the end? I doubt it. It is a hobby that interests me. That is all. Should I find silver coins, I do, of course, stack them in the safe.

Time for more coffee. That, and watch the rain come down.
 
goldsilverpro said:
In the US, it's illegal to melt pennies or nickels, except for the WWII war nickels, which have 7% silver in them. I think you can legally melt anything else.
Yep! When silver dimes, quarters, halves, and dollars were replaced, there was a prohibition against melting any of them. But once the mint had recaptured the majority of the silver coins, the ban was lifted. I expect the same will happen with the current ban on pennies at some point. Nickels, on the other hand, could take much longer since there is still no replacement and their intrinsic value is higher than face.

War nickels are 56% copper, 35% Silver, and 9% manganese.

I save copper pennies and nickels.

Dave
 
FrugalRefiner said:
goldsilverpro said:
In the US, it's illegal to melt pennies or nickels, except for the WWII war nickels, which have 7% silver in them. I think you can legally melt anything else.
Yep! When silver dimes, quarters, halves, and dollars were replaced, there was a prohibition against melting any of them. But once the mint had recaptured the majority of the silver coins, the ban was lifted. I expect the same will happen with the current ban on pennies at some point. Nickels, on the other hand, could take much longer since there is still no replacement and their intrinsic value is higher than face.

War nickels are 56% copper, 35% Silver, and 9% manganese.

I save copper pennies and nickels.

Dave
You're right, Dave. I was thinking of something else.

I doubt if more than a few percent of the silver coins were gathered by the mint. I can remember that people started to hoard them quickly after they started make the fake sandwich coins in 1965. About halfway on this page is a chart on all of the silver coins minted and the silver coins melted by the mint. About 30% of the dollars, 10% of the halves, 6% of the quarters, and 3% of the dimes that were minted were melted by the mint.
http://www.numismaster.com/ta/numis/Article.jsp?ArticleId=18381

In 1979 and 1980, a large percentage of the silver coins were melted illegally because of the high prices. At one point, silver hit $52/oz. Taking inflation into consideration, that would be over $150/oz today. Everyone in the business was in on this, from the guys doing the melting, to the coin dealers who were buying up the coins from their customers, to the refiners who were taking in the bars. Later on, I actually worked for a melter that had made $7 million in a year - that's about $21 million today. In 1979-1980, I was working for a refiner that specialized in silver. When we got to work in the morning, there were people in line waiting to sell us silver or gold scrap. At any given time, we had as many as 200 plastic 5 gallon buckets filled with scrap sterling and coins sitting on the floor, waiting to go through the 12, 30 gallon silver cells that we had - about 5000 oz/day production, since a couple of the cells were breakdown cells. Handy & Harmon, the biggest silver refiners in the US at that time, had a 6 month backlog on silver refining. Very exciting times!

"The Big Silver Melt" is a book about those times. It's available on Amazon. I've had 2 or 3 copies of it, over the years. I did find my copy of "Beyond Greed", the story of the Hunt Brothers attempt to corner that started this whole thing. The following link is a very interesting article about the melting. Something really interesting was a quote from a large coin dealer that was heavily involved in the melting. He said that when the silver hit $50, about 98% of all the US silver coins left in the country were scheduled for bmelting. There were so many of them that it would take all of the melters 3 months to melt them. Then a funny thing happened. The silver price suddenly dropped and the dealers started buying bask the bags waiting melt After it hit $52, it dropped $10 the next day, if I remember right. They suspended the trading of silver on the commodity market, and I was told that was the first time in history any trading on the commodity market had been suspended. When searching silver prices, I found one chart that said it went to $112 and another said $42. I can't remember either of those prices actually happening.I was there and I remember $52 and that's what I'll use.
https://www.pcgs.com/News/After-The-Melts-Whats-Left-In-Silver-Coins

What I'm saying is that the vast majority of silver coins did not return to the mint. They were melted illegally by individuals in cahoots with the biggest names in the silver industry. This severely affected coin values, but no one still knows by how much. Also, vast unknown quantities of foreign silver coins were also melted at that same time. No one knows the real numbers.
 
goldsilverpro said:
This severely affected coin values, but no one still knows by how much. Also, vast unknown quantities of foreign silver coins were also melted at that same time. No one knows the real numbers.

Have no fear, China and Ebay will supply you with whatever rare dates and mint marks you need for your collection.
 
Chris, you're absolutely right. I should have said the Mint lifted the ban once they determined the majority of silver coins were no longer in circulation, not after they had removed them. Your post brings back memories for me.

My dad used to send me to the local bank about a block from our home on Saturday mornings with a $20.00 bill and a few dollars worth of those new sandwich quarters. I'd change the bill for 2 rolls of quarters, go out in the lobby, sort out the silver, replace them with sandwiches, then go back in to exchange them for new rolls and do it again. After a couple rolls, I'd run out of sandwich quarters and I'd switch to dimes. The employees were suspicious at first, thinking I was shorting the rolls, but I told them what I was doing and most of them didn't mind as long as I just went through a few cycles a day.

I never got anything for my effort at the time. It was something my dad asked me to do, so I did it. When my parents passed away my brother and I found a nice little metal box with rolls of silver coins. 8)

I was in the jewelry business back in the Hunt days. It nearly put me out of business as the silver price soared, so when it crashed back to reality it was a blessing for me.

Interesting links.

Dave
 
Just to clarify, I was referring to melt value of copper pennies in that same sense that circulated silver coinage is bought today for it's intrinsic "melt" value rather than actually refining the metals out of them.

Silver coinage was typically 90% silver and copper pennies are 95% copper. Both are commonly sold/traded for their intrinsic value but silver is more common because of the margins. Copper/Zinc might not be far behind because the only cost right now is time and effort, just like silver coinage years ago.

Semantics are important and I should have made that clear up front.

My thoughts are that people that sorted silver coinage post 1964 were not planning to actually melt the coins but rather as a store of value after the coinage was debased by clad coins. I'm just hoping to do the same thing with copper pennies.

The way I see it, if I have any savings to put away, I may as well do it with copper pennies worth double the face value today instead of a CD or savings account that pays a couple percent a year if your lucky.

Maybe I'm old fashion, but I think money should be worth something close to what
the face value says it's worth. We work hard for it and it should actually be worth something more than an edict.

Stepping down from my soapbox..
 
scrappappy said:
Maybe I'm old fashion, but I think money should be worth something close to what
the face value says it's worth. We work hard for it and it should actually be worth something more than an edict.

Whilst I agree, sadly the whole world revolves around notional credit and notional value. A UK £5 bank note says "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of £5" which defines the state of the whole system doesn't it?
 
Paper fiat currency was at first a way to move large amounts of value without the weight and could be exchaged back into gold sovereigns or dollars etc at the banks, the con was when that exchange was abolished and the governments could print worthless paper without the need to have the actual metal, the promise to pay £5 is a throw back to the days when you could get 5 sovereigns for that now worthless piece of paper :shock: :D
 
anachronism said:
scrappappy said:
Maybe I'm old fashion, but I think money should be worth something close to what
the face value says it's worth. We work hard for it and it should actually be worth something more than an edict.

Whilst I agree, sadly the whole world revolves around notional credit and notional value. A UK £5 bank note says "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of £5" which defines the state of the whole system doesn't it?

Exactly, the banknote is an important part of that paradigm. With our current monetary system, we basically just trade other people's debt. It's a big game of musical chairs and we are not the one's running the music. :? :eek:

So I just keep exchanging the paper promissory notes for something tangible.
 
snoman701 said:
I roll hunted when I quit smoking six years ago. I won't do it again....taking a couple five gallon buckets full of zincs in to the bank counting machine was a bit of a pain in the butt.....but the bank employees were always kind about it.

I usually bring them to a Coinstar machine and get a gift certificate to Amazon or something similar that doesn't charge a fee. I agree it's not a fun part of the hobby but unfortunately it's part of the process.

But now with Zinc pennies almost being worth face value, maybe it's time to start keeping those also and there is no need to bring anything back to the counting machines. But I'm still trying to get that theory past the wife :wink:
 
nickvc said:
Paper fiat currency was at first a way to move large amounts of value without the weight and could be exchaged back into gold sovereigns or dollars etc at the banks

I enjoy that part of the history. The Knights Templar invented that part of the modern banking system almost a thousand years ago. It was a way for religious pilgrims to travel through hostile territory without holding physical assets in their possession. The only catch was, if they didn't make it through their journey, the assets became the property of the Knights Templar/Bank. :shock: :G :(

Not much has changed in a thousand years and we still live by that principle. If we don't hold it, we don't own it.
 
scrappappy said:
nickvc said:
Paper fiat currency was at first a way to move large amounts of value without the weight and could be exchaged back into gold sovereigns or dollars etc at the banks

I enjoy that part of the history. The Knights Templar invented that part of the modern banking system almost a thousand years ago. It was a way for religious pilgrims to travel through hostile territory without holding physical assets in their possession. The only catch was, if they didn't make it through their journey, the assets became the property of the Knights Templar/Bank. :shock: :G :(

Not much has changed in a thousand years and we still live by that principle. If we don't hold it, we don't own it.

That's one of the reasons the Pope chap bumped them all off isn't it? Interesting fact though - the murder of the Knights Templar is what actually gave birth the Friday 13th being unlucky, and all the unluckiness associated with the number 13- witches covens , all of it. Amazing how things get twisted out of shape over a few hundred years.

Whilst I don't agree with the massacre that happened, sometimes I wonder if a cull of bankers is long overdue again.... 8)
 
Back when silver prices where over $25/ozt I supported myself for a couple years almost solely from CRH. Lots of volume and still a good supply. That would be MUCH harder today as the price is low and finds are fewer. And the thing that makes it hardest is TD not having the machines anymore. I did just find a new bank chain has taken over an old one and they have machines in the lobby. I may start up again.
 
I get £100 pounds worth of 50ps and the same of £2 coins every couple of weeks. They get changed back into notes with a couple of my local shops who are always happy with the change.

It was just over a year ago I found my Kew, it was in the last bag of the day and was quite a moment.

I hear some banks get quite stuffy about people doing this and say you should have a business account if you want lots of change. In extreme cases they can potentially close your account. I have no first hand knowledge of this, but have heard over the grape vine from some FB groups I used to frequent. Having said that the few people who reported this happening were going through up to a £1000+ of coins every week!

My local bank has never caused me any issues, sometimes they may be a little short of 50ps but are always happy to order some in.
 
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