What Happens To All The Coin?

That's 240 boxes
50 rolls per box
50 pennies per roll

total of 600,000 pennies

WOW

And these are just the coins destroyed accidently and inadvertently and don't include the countless billions of coins destroyed intentionally by government and private concerns. All the old Soviet and European coins were melted enmasse to make refrigerators and mixers. Spain melted the entire onhand supply of the old 100P coins. I worked in one plant that made stainless steel out of shredded cars still dripping coins and 100 lb bags of Lebanese 1 L nickel coins from 1968. Back in the '80's there was a cargo ship that hauled (round robin) new Japanese cars to South America and went back laden with coins to make components and consumer goods.

People only imagine there are vast numbers of modern coins but most moderns made since 1945 no longer exist at all and survivors can be in horribly degraded condition. A lot of the surviving 1950 aluminum East German coins are in atrocious condition and sitting in sock drawers and change jars in Russia. There may be only thousands of lightly worn coins surviving and hundreds with any luster at all. Maybe you'll find a BU roll but the odds are very much against you because people didn't save moderns except in specific instances where they saved entire bags and pallets.

The US government has melted plenty of coin as well. It comes in by the truckload from all over the country. The FED gathered up steel cents and silver nickels and melted them. They removed hundreds of millions of silver coin in '68 and '69 and destroyed them. They invented a waffling machine to deter factory workers from saving coin intended for melt. India and Indian companies caused an enormous attrition to the old nickel coinage and cu/ ni, and even aluminum. Governments inflate currency until coins have more metal value than face value and then they get consumed intentionally as well as inadvertently.

There are lots and lots of moderns that have been made scarce or rare by these ongoing processes with the poster child being the Soviet coins from the '60's. '70's, and '80's.

And then there's that Lincoln Cent out there on a Mars rover...