Is Keeping Copper Pennies Worth It?

In the long term yes, they are worth keeping. Copper demand is forecasted to outstrip supply year over year. More and more electric cars are being manufactured each year, which use three times as much copper wiring (about 150 lbs) as conventional cars. Also, China is now only accepting newly mined industrial copper, no longer accepting scrap, recycled copper. These two factors are going to push copper prices generally higher in the long term. If you don't mind holding on to them for a number of years (which I don't) they are worth keeping, due to increasing industrial demand for copper.

I just started collecting coins and decided to keep the coppers. I'm mainly sticking to coin roll hunting without buying boxes. I just have $150 I'm coins in rotate through every bank in my city that'll let me buy rolls from them. So since I'm not finding a lot of rare or silvers I started adding coppers. I got a good collection with lots of "older" circulated coins in great condition that I set to the side. Never know when you can make a trade for a handful of good quality coppers for that one good coin you need.

They are technically brass.

About 6 months ago I had watched several youtube videos on copper penny hoarding as the topic caught my eye. I do have several thousand pre 82 pennies... Some people in those videos have several 55gal drums packed full and they do it with no regard for searching on nice finds. They do it strictly on a gamble that in their lifetime, the government will cease producing pennies which will allow them to sell their hoard at copper/brass scrap prices. According to several references on various sites, today's rate on pre 1982 pennies are approx 3 cents in scrap. In their minds, they can store $300 in value by spending $100. A quick browse on ebay and you'll see cheap penny sorting devices for sale where you dump in hundreds of pennies and it spits out copper in one direction and everything else into the other direction which makes the task of searching penny rolls easier. However, these people are not coin collectors, they are scrap hoarders.

Me personally, I've already dumped most of my pre 82 pennies into the wall cavity in my old farm house. Figured let somebody a hundred years from now enjoy a small find and maybe rescue what I treated as junk.

Interesting topic. Used to save my copper pennies and I had a full box ($25) of all copper. A few years back I was chatting with a super friendly teller that would order boxes of nickels for me weekly and saved anything odd for me. She mentioned her father saved his copper and had a lot of them. It was near fathers day so I brought in my box (no wheats) and traded it in to her so she could buy and give to her dad. She was very happy! Anyway, fast forward to today when I was turning in some halves at a different bank and I see the teller had a few boxes of coin out for customers. I buy the nickel box from her and notice a box of pennies labeled 'all copper 1970-1979' and mentioned that they would make some collectors day. She tells me some guy turned in $600 worth of copper pennies a little while ago.... but she gave them all out to business customers... wow! Just thought I'd share that I'm sure plenty of copper is out there. You just never know what people will return to the bank.