Copper Hoarding

After reading much of this thread yesterday I searched ebay for "copper penny roll" and found a few active auctions with bids almost double the face value.

One was for I think $15.00 FV and the bidding was up to almost $30 (free shipping so the seller has to pony-up on that).

Another was for $50.00 FV and the bidding was up to around $80. Shipping was pretty steep on this one, but then again, 5000 pennies would be a heavy shipment.

These were all listed as copper pennies (pre-'82) - no mention of any wheat, indian head, Mercury dime, etc.

So I found an old 5-gallon bucket in the garage, cleaned it out (a little), and tossed in the 17-or-so pre-'82 Lincolns I had in the ashtray in my car. It will be awhile before I have at least 1000, but by then people may be willing to pay 5X or 10X FV. If not, I go down to the bank and get a $10-bill.

I have about $100 in copper pennies saved.

For me, searching pennies for copper feels a bit more rewarding than sorting dimes, quarters, halves etc for silver. Maybe its just because I'm impatient. I like that every box of pennies is guaranteed to yield at least a small amount of copper, whereas there is a strong possibility of getting skunked on a silver box.

I always seem to find at least some wheats and foreign coins in every box of pennies. I also seem to find dimes quite often in my penny rolls, and each one of those is a 10x return instantly.

I made a video on the topic if anyone is interested, its located in this thread
https://goccf.com/t/129790

I would much rather pick up aluminum cans for scrap $$.

HH

If your hoarding copper just go buy copper pipe from your local hardware store. Yiu don't pay a premium and its way easier to sell in the end.

Exactly !!

Ive been keeping all the copper UK pennies I find out and about and I'm starting a bag of 2ps. Theres very few left, surprisingly, because people noticed early and a whole LOAD were melted in the last big copper spike.

Ive got about a kilo. I'm not keeping it to sell for copper, per se, but the older coins age better, have a nicer feel and look nicer. The fact that they are intrisically worth more than face is simply a nice bonus.

A NOTE TO AMERICAN COPPER PENNY HOARDERS: Its much easier in the UK, the new non copper coins are steel, so you can sort the coins using a big magnet!

When I read silly things like just go buy copper pipe, or pick up aluminum cans all I can say is that I just don't think some people "get it"... Hoarding and collecting copper coins isn't about scrap metal recycling. I seriously doubt the majority of people that do this are planning on melting down their buckets of pennies into blobs of copper. That's kind of ridiculous.

I don't hoard pennies on a large scale but I do buy up all the big old copper pennies from Canada and U.K. and other countries because they are affordable, they have loads of history and I think they are beautiful coins. So I want to get as many as I can, while I still can..