Pennies Anyone? This Is Quite A Lot.

Listings with more story than substance always turn me off. Not to mention the overuse of the term "key date".

Over 800,000 small cents alone. That's an impossible "collection" to sell intact. He'd have been much, much better off buying almost anything else, in my humble opinion.

It sounds like he enjoyed hoarding them, so it's not a total loss.

Now that TD has abandon their coinstar machines, it would cost about 10% fees just to deposit

Hoards like this, are for Zoell variety hunters... they can be fun to sift through, if that is what you want to do with your time. If they are original, they can be a fun thing to do in this hobby (thrill of the hunt).

After the local dealers told this gentleman to "take his coins to the bank", I bought his large lot (200+ lbs) of pre-1960 pennies from a hoarder here in Ottawa. I paid 1.5 times face and went through the entire lot. There was a 1923, several 1926 and 1930 pennies, and a 1955 NSF in that hoard, but I mostly made my money by putting the George V and George VI coins (random mix of dates) into rolls, and selling them to local flea market dealers here in Ottawa $1 a roll for George VI and $5 a roll for George V (after I had gone through them for Zoell varieties and doubled dates). The photo of that hoard is below, and not a single coin was newer than 1960.



I also bought a similar 250 lbs lot of 5c coins from the same hoarder, paying 1.5 times face. All the low grade nickel coins were sold to Hub City Coins (as bullion, 10% over face) I found a 1925 and several 1932 far 2 coins, and I also found a 1954 NSF. Again, local flea market dealers bought the rolls of tombacs and George V nickels ($10 per roll).

In the end - I learned about Zoell varieties, stocked my binders with decent pre-1950 AU and MS-60 to -63 coins, and learned a bit more about grading EF and AU coins. If you do not count my time, I made my money back several times over. But - at 1.5 times face I really had nothing to lose.

I had a similar situation to SPP-Ottawa's story in the beginning of the year although I found much less rare stuff. I wish I could find buyers for $10 cash a roll of george V nickels, selling the common rolls on ebay is annoying with the weight and size. From my experience he prices listed on this ebay auction are ridiculously high. Searching through all of the coins has helped my grading skills as well as variety recognition as well so I definitely feel it was worth it, although time consuming.

Is melting copper cents legal in Canada? I've heard it's not in U.S. Not sure about other alloys.

I do as well. I wonder if at one time he had a plan to use the pennies for some type of grand creative project, that never came to pass.

I'm reminded of the Glass House in BC, built with 500,000 embalming fluid bottles.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gla...sh_Columbia)

I suppose buying only the same thing over and over has it's advantages in terms of limited options - but for sure the problem arises, after the first 100 or 500 or 2000, what's 1 or 100 more. Imelda Marcos probably thought the same of her shoes!

SPP
How many 1932 fars did You find?