Are You Saving Memorial Cents From Circulation? Even The Zinc Ones?

People take memorials for granted. The attitude seems to be that they made too many billions to save them so they'll have to save themselves.

They didn't.

Most of the finest examples did go into mint sets. These coins were struck under higher pressure by new dies so there's a far better chance of finding very well made coins. The trick is to find the ones that weren't mangled being put into the mint sets.

Actually, you're way too late to the party. Over the past 4-5 years the proportion of Shield cents have gradually increased in bank boxes/bags. Memorials are getting quickly lost to attrition. Mint sets are getting opened and dumped at face, rolls are usually improperly stored, and what's left is just garbage MS-63 and below.

I'm not sure why the brass memorials are more rare to find on the coastlines. Here in the midwest our bank rolls/boxes show about 27-28% of circulating is still brass. The average I would find for wheats in a $25 bank box used to be about 12, now it's more like 7-10 or so. But, that depends, hoards or buckets will come into a bank and sometimes you get a better box. I'm surprised how many people just save their pennies in jars, they don't separate them at all. I know someone who saves all his pennies, he fills a jar and into basement storage, he does slough off the wheats separate though.

Copper would have to go up more for them to be worth anything in regard to melt due to refining costs.

They do have some use. Fill a half gallon jar or tin and makes a good door stop is about the best use I have found so far. They are dirty, and they stink.

Meanwhile, the mint is still churning out allot of them, about 8 billion+/year. Yet, many retailers are beginning to round up/down already, and the take a penny jar at gas stations are not going away either, the money lost is in the labor of dealing with having to count or give them out in change, thus slowing down the next customer transaction.

It is not altogether true that saving them as an investment you will lose. They still have their face value, but where you will lose is inflation since the money could be put into something that has yield or return. Sorting them is a losing proposition at best unless you find a rare penny that has value, more than likely the time would be better spent working a regular job, then taking that money and buying coin with numismatic potential.

There are no "refining costs" because they will simply be used as alloy. The scrappers pay very little for metal because they are extremely inefficient and have enormous overhead. Then they sell to jobbers who are even less efficient.

It requires only a few dollars worth of natural gas to melt a very large number of pennies. The zinc simply floats to the top.

Of course the government won't make a profit on these either when they melt them. They'll lose billions gathering them up and in reverse costs and sell the copper for millions.

Until they do melt them pennies are like an albatross tied around the neck of the economy.

I spy with my little eye... a 1981 in there!

Maybe sooner.

You're quite right.

I forgot zinc boiled at so low a temperature.

Most coins are used as chill scrap in alloy production. Batches of metal are brought to about the right alloy and a little too hot. Then scrap is added to bring the temperature down for casting or pouring.