The Copper Penny Thread

[optionT]

Any discussion on copper pennies can go here. Hobby level, hand sorters, hard core Ryedale sorters are all welcomed to join in the discussion.

[Gaillo]

OOoooohhH!!! Thanks for opening this!

For those who aren't already aware (and who ISN'T on this site!) - Pre-1982 copper cents are THE best deal in metals currenly available. Currently on sale, courtesy of the U.S. Mint, a Pre-1982 (and a sizeable percentage of 1982 as well) copper cent sells for over HALF OFF it's actual metal value! That's right, you get TWICE as much metal as you pay for! Plus, being guaranteed by the U.S. Government, you will NEVER get LESS than you pay for them when it's time to sell!

A quick tip for sorting 1982 pennies to separate the copper from the zinc:

Drop the pennies on a hard wooden surface like a table or counter. You will hear a distinctive copper "ring" for those made of copper, and a duller "thunk" for the zinc models. Practice with a pre-1982 and post-1982 penny to get the "ear" for it - once you learn what to listen for, you'll never forget it!

[Mister_Pennyweather]

Coinflation has the values of coins currently in circulation and old US silver coinage.

http://coinflation.com/

The Real Cent forum is the most popular one on the penny sorting topic.

http://realcent.forumco.com/

[Down1]

I just started doing this in 2010 thanks to reading the threads about this.
It's fun.
I usually buy $5.00 at a time.
Here are my recent percentages of copper pennies found.
89 out of 500 = 17.8%
118 out of 500 = 23.59%
160 out of 500 = 32%
134 out of 500 = 26.8%
148 out of 500 = 29.59%
129 out of 500 = 25.8%
117 out of 500 = 23.4%

[AOW]

Dang, I'm going the other way. My last box was my worst ever with 8 wheats for an entire $25.00 box!

[AndreaGail]

hand sorter here

not that into it, probably have done $50 of copper worth

I enjoy it to not only get coppers but also to find better quality coins for my whitman folders and find those random foreign coins to go into my foreign coin change jar

even found a zimbabwean penny once ;D

[Defender]

I scored my best roll of pennies ever today. ;D

14 wheats and 16 other coppers in one roll. Surprisingly there were also a few pennies as recent as 2006. :o
People are rolling up their penny/change jars to make ends meet.

[TylerDurden]

I'll usually pick up $5-$10 worth of pennies whenever I stop by the bank. I think I'm averaging somewhere around 25-30% per roll.

What do you guys do with the zinc pennies you have left over? My better half is starting to complain about the coffee cans full of pennies that's accumulating under my desk. I can't decide if I should roll them or just suck it up and take them to my nearest coinstar.

[CopperSilverGold]

Small time sorter here that needs to get back to doing 4-5 boxes each week. I took a break when I felt like I had enough but now am getting the itch to add to the stash. My goal is to add another 100K of copper cents by the end of the year which shouldn't be a problem doing what I did before. I've been tempted to go the lazy route and buy some that are already sorted but then I take a step back and realize that would be stupid on my part when I can get them for face value. Why pay someone 1.5 to 2.0x face for these when I am getting 30% yields on my own?

[Down1]

I like to use Coinstar and I take the Amazon option so I won't get charged a fee. Always have stuff to buy there.

[jedemdasseine]

I hope Ryedale sticks around. His machines are fantastic.

[TylerDurden]

I had to deposit some checks at the bank so I picked up 10 rolls of pennies while I was there. On the way home I noticed that one of the rolls looked really old and had 1952-D written on it. I was excited because I've read about people scoring an entire roll of wheaties and thought maybe I had one. I got home and sure enough the whole roll was wheat pennies. I wasn't planning on sorting through the other coins until tomorrow night but I couldn't resist just checking to make sure none of the others weren't the same. Apparently it was my lucky day because 7 of the 10 rolls were all wheat pennies. I think I need to play the lottery tonight. ;D

[madfranks]

I had to deposit some checks at the bank so I picked up 10 rolls of pennies while I was there. On the way home I noticed that one of the rolls looked really old and had 1952-D written on it. I was excited because I've read about people scoring an entire roll of wheaties and thought maybe I had one. I got home and sure enough the whole roll was wheat pennies. I wasn't planning on sorting through the other coins until tomorrow night but I couldn't resist just checking to make sure none of the others weren't the same. Apparently it was my lucky day because 7 of the 10 rolls were all wheat pennies. I think I need to play the lottery tonight. ;D


Awesome! That happened to me a couple months ago where I got a solid roll of wheats from my local bank. After I saw I had a solid roll I went back and got the rest of them, a total of 4 or 5 solid wheats and 2 or 3 solid date coppers from the early 60's.

[Kirkland]

I've been sorting rolls of pennies for copper cents for about two years now. Late last year, I started getting $25 Boxes of pennies, and it's a lot of fun going through the sorting cycle; Picking up boxes, sorting them at home, extracting the coppers, returning the zinc cents to a dump bank and cashing them in to use that money toward more boxes. I find many wheat pennies as well, I'd say about eight in every box. I think my best find for pennies would be the time I found nine Indian Head cents in just two boxes! It was incredible, and I doubt that will happen again. I find dimes in rolls of pennies occasionally too, and once even found a silver dime in a roll. It's a fun and rewarding thing to do, search through boxes of pennies, and I will continue to search.

[iOWNme]

I have been doing this also for about a year. I still havent made it through all of my personal change, pretty close though.

I get bored....

-Avg weight of pre- '82 penny is about 3 grams (10 samples)
-Avg weight of post- 82' penny is about 2.5 grams (10 samples)


So it would take roughly 151 pennies to weigh 1 pound. Pre 82' pennies are about 95% copper, and scrap copper goes for about $2.50 l/b. So you could trade $1.51 in pennies for $2.50 in FRN's.

But then i would be destroying 'money', and then i would be a terrorist.

[SLV^GLD]

Find a bank that lets account holders use the in-house coin counting machine.

I wore the one at my last bank out more than once dumping halves. I accessed it while working out of state.

I moved back home and have been prowling for a similar opportunity. I just located the target bank and will setup the account this weekend. It won't be quite the same as dumping two states over, though. I expect a lot of my own dumps to recirculate back to me.

Personally, I find sorting halves to be far easier and more rewarding than pennies although you will NEVER get a skunk box of pennies and you will FREQUENTLY get skunk boxes of halves.

I stopped sorting pennies when I had accumulated $100 face of them rolled and re-boxed.

I strictly hand-sort. I would consider sorting pennies again if I had a machine to do the crap work for me. Unfortunately the machine can't tell if it's a wheat or just a copper cent.

[iOWNme]

I just found this on my banks site:



Coin Processing Fee - Member

4.9%

The Coinstar machine automatically deducts the 4.9% fee — or you can choose to turn your coins into an e-certificate and eliminate the fee.


e-cert?

[SLV^GLD]

I just found this on my banks site:



Coin Processing Fee - Member

4.9%

The Coinstar machine automatically deducts the 4.9% fee — or you can choose to turn your coins into an e-certificate and eliminate the fee.


e-cert?


A coupon to pre-approved online vendors such as Amazon which was alluded to earlier in this thread.

[iOWNme]

I have been doing this also for about a year. I still havent made it through all of my personal change, pretty close though.

I get bored....

-Avg weight of pre- '82 penny is about 3 grams (10 samples)
-Avg weight of post- 82' penny is about 2.5 grams (10 samples)


So it would take roughly 151 pennies to weigh 1 pound. Pre 82' pennies are about 95% copper, and scrap copper goes for about $2.50 l/b. So you could trade $1.51 in pennies for $2.50 in FRN's.

But then i would be destroying 'money', and then i would be a terrorist.




The 82' penny was made in both zinc and copper. (Im sure most here know that). The difference is in the weight. Now i need to go through my 82' pennies and either weigh them or drop them.....LOL

[Down1]

This might be blasphemous to some, but I have no time to sort 82's.
I put them all in my zinc bucket.

[Kirkland]

This might be blasphemous to some, but I have no time to sort 82's.
I put them all in my zinc bucket.


It's really not that hard to separate the 1982 zincs from the 1982 coppers. All I do is tap the coin on a hard surface and the ones that make a ringing noise are copper, and the ones that make a normal thunk are zinc. It really doesn't take a lot of extra time, I'm just saying.

[Sparky]

This might be blasphemous to some, but I have no time to sort 82's.
I put them all in my zinc bucket.


It's really not that hard to separate the 1982 zincs from the 1982 coppers. All I do is tap the coin on a hard surface and the ones that make a ringing noise are copper, and the ones that make a normal thunk are zinc. It really doesn't take a lot of extra time, I'm just saying.

The real issue is if you have to convince your buyer some day that you have meticulously sorted the 1982s properly. I suppose that won't matter if they ultimately end up at a refiner who will pay you based on the actual copper amount that was refined. I don't bother with them. But then again, I just do this with my change for the principle of the matter.

[Kirkland]

This might be blasphemous to some, but I have no time to sort 82's.
I put them all in my zinc bucket.


It's really not that hard to separate the 1982 zincs from the 1982 coppers. All I do is tap the coin on a hard surface and the ones that make a ringing noise are copper, and the ones that make a normal thunk are zinc. It really doesn't take a lot of extra time, I'm just saying.

The real issue is if you have to convince your buyer some day that you have meticulously sorted the 1982s properly. I suppose that won't matter if they ultimately end up at a refiner who will pay you based on the actual copper amount that was refined. I don't bother with them. But then again, I just do this with my change for the principle of the matter.


True, true. And what some people do is keep their 1982 coppers in a separate container from the rest of their coppers.

Overall, I think it's kind of wasteful to get rid of good copper cents, even if they're coppers from 1982, they're still 95% copper.

[madfranks]

I got a wheat cent in my change yesterday. I don't know what's worse, that I get excited over finding a 1953 wheat cent, or that I'm excited enough to post about it here.

[Down1]

Found a 1902 Indian Head.
Looks cool & not worth much.
I think I will keep it.

[Son-of-Liberty]

so what's the deal with the wheat pennies? is it just that they are olderwith more numismatic value? Or are they heavier also? I am from canada and the older coppers are heavier while the newer coppers from about 82-96 are lighter.

[Sparky]

so what's the deal with the wheat pennies? is it just that they are olderwith more numismatic value? Or are they heavier also? I am from canada and the older coppers are heavier while the newer coppers from about 82-96 are lighter.


The only difference is the design. Minted 1909-1958. Small numismatic value.