When Will Copper Be Legal To Melt?

INDEED! That's exactly why I keep a small, tidy hoard.

The no melt ban,as I understand it, was designed to discourage hoarding. I don't think it has accomplished its purpose!The ban will be removed when cents and nickels are no longer worth more than the metal in them. A change in alloy would accomplish that and as older nickels are replaced, it won't be an issue. I don't think it will be too long till the copper cent ratio in circulation drops to the level where hoarding will not have a major effect on the number of cents in circulation, then the ban will have no purpose. I am still finding about 23% copper in cent rolls but it was lower until the recent"second great coin jar dump" which seems to have run its course in nickels and will slow down in cents soon I imagine. I am at just about 2200 rolls of copper so I am in pretty good shape even if the percentages drop off. If you really want to build a decent hoard I would recommend you start now. You can always change your mind and cash them at face later but if you miss the boat there will not be another chance in this lifetime! Just my thoughts based on 5 years of roll searching and hoarding. I am OFTEN WRONG! Ask my wife!

Still regardless of what anyone says, there really is no such thing as The Coin Police. No Silver Melting Police. No Copper Melting Police either. There are smelters all over the area by me and they take anything that is metal. There are no Metal Inspectors around any of them. And for sure no Metal Melting Police.
Anyone can say anything they want about melting coins, recite laws about melting coins, produce articles about melting coins and still it goes on and on and on.
Yes for a Numismatist all such meltings of coins are horrible. But to about 75% of the rest of the World, those little round things are just metal. And if they can make a cent by having some melted, that is what they do and again, there is really no Coin Police.

I doubt there's a lot of copper cent melting going on - it's not that economical yet. I'd imagine that cents won't be melted down in large quantities until the cost of zinc is high enough to make melting zincolns down worth while. That way you wouldn't have to sort them. I'm not really up on smelting or metallurgy so maybe that's not really possible. As soon as it becomes legal and worthwhile though, coinstar will do it and that will be the end of the cent in circulation.

Right now the cost of materials and labor doesn't make melting pennies worth it. If you can source enough of them and can mechanically separate the copper ones, I'd imagine you could make more money selling the pennies to speculators than you would selling them for scrap.

For the copper thieves, it's probably easier to pull down a gutter, rob a construction site or gut a foreclosed home for copper to sell than it is to steal someone's penny collection. Heck, the people around here pry the commemorative plaques out of the parks and steal gutters from churches - not much return, but easier than sorting pennies!

Your doubting is not exactly true. There is a massive quantity of Copper coins being melted all the time. Actually it's not just pure Copper ones only since the people that melt them have no idea of what the ones after 1982 are made of. As I previously noted an electrician I know was telling me how they all just massively melt down Electrical wiring/cables and throw in large amounts of pennies too with no idea that some or possibly most are Zinc with a Copper coating. Wires, Copper looking pans or plates, electrical contacts, coins, Copper piping all get dumped and melted together. Anything that looks like Copper gets put together and the fate for all is the same. No one knows nor cares about dates or mint marks on coins that are to be melted. They are just metal to most people. And the people that work in the metal recyclers around me would only know what it is if it was a Peso.


Again remember that those that do the melting could care less of percentages of anything. In most instances Copper is melted in bulk quantities and the smelters know how mcuh heat is required to sift off non Copper materials and leave other heavier ones as residues. They are not just melting coins, they are melting wires, pipes, tubing, etc as well as anything else that even faintly looks like Copper including coins. And too, they know how to sell off such things as Zinc, Tin, Alluminum and/or anthing else they recover.

Like someone has already mentioned, I don't worry about when/if but just adding to my "stack" of pre-1982 cents because when it comes time to sell to refiners or private parties, holding the original cents will prove their copper content better in that form rather than a bar. That way, whatever someone who buys does with the copper doesn't matter because I got paid for 95% pure copper and made the deal through a face value of the pennies without having to weigh them.

I gotta play devil's advocate. Melt away..melt all you want. It will make our "Collections" increase in value. Especially in future generations. Supply and Demand.

...I do hoard copper btw. :D

"no coin police" Wouldn't the coin police be the Secret Service?