Pre 1982 Copper Pennies

Well here's the deal - If you melt them and the scrap company RFX's your ingots and it shows 95%copper and 5%zinc it's gonna cause a red flag - Now I didn't tell you this BUT you have to melt some pure copper pipe into your ingots so there is not the 95% to 5% zinc ratio.

I keep all my 95% copper cents to prevent them from being melted because law or not, you know they are.

If you have time to do some more reading...

https://goccf.com/t/438552

Glad to help!

Personally, considering melting them for their copper value is illegal and no coin store will buy them (at least the copper Memorial cents), I stopped hoarding them in 2023 and now spend them like any other. Plus, thousands of pennies took up a ton of room in my place, and I prefer a living space that looks only kind of cluttered.

The Indians melted most of their nickel and cu/ni coins and these were far harder to melt than copper pennies. I shouldn't be surprised if a lot more of these are already gone than people think. There are other uses as well from cheap washers and spacers to electrical contacts between a battery and cable.

A lot of the Indian coins were melted in significant batches by producers to make things like razor blades. It was illegal but few were caught. Even in this country many modern coins are being melted every day. They are mostly used as alloy in copper, and steel production but also as chill scrap all through industry. A Japanese ship that delivered cars to South America routinely sailed home full of modern coins to be turned into cars and refrigerators. Most of the old Soviet, east block, and most other European coin from before the Euro have been destroyed.

Most of this destruction isn't critically important top future collectors because there are many survivors. But high denomination coins have been decimated and many of these are hard to find in pristine condition.

People still believe that modern cents are extremely common but they are only common relative the tiny demand. If demand were to increase substantially as it already has in several countries including Russia, China, and India prices would explode higher. Some of these prices have gone up thousands fold!

Nothing is going to stop pennies from being melted someday. The government will probably start recovering the coins and will then lift the ban. Copper prices will drop for a few days and then continue on whatever trajectory applied before the ban was lifted.

I hoarded for the copper from 2009-2015. And then off-loaded these for a modest rate of 1.8x in 2022.

I really enjoy looking through pennies (copper & zinc years) for rare examples and other oddities. So yes very tempted to buy a boxes again while this is possible, but not eager for the logistics associated with CRH (pick-up & returning coins to banks). And now that I'm a little older, I also see the value in outright buying coins that I like instead of trying my luck sifting through coin rolls.

When I was CRH I set aside all the coppers and I still have a large glass jar of them that I continue to add to when I get one in change.