Or they were going to melt them and then discovered they are not all copper, but zinc ones were in the mix, so rather than sort them, they sold them off?
I knew this would be a fun one! Thanks for all the great comments. Too many of them are curled for it to have just been a pair of snips. Someone had some kind of heavy duty shredder and dumped a bunch of BU coins in it for some reason. Just an oddity for sure but kind of neat anyway.
Since the width of the strips are exactly the same, I agree it's probably some commercial-grade paper shredder. They design them to cut through paper clips, so they probably could handle some copper or zinc discs.
Quote: Maybe someone demonstrating some of those miracle scissors that can cut anything.
Your comment brought back memories of my Mom buying a pair of those type of scissors from a door-to-door salesman in the late '60's or early '70's. The guy actually cut a cent to demonstrate them. Needless to say, when Mom wasn't around I cut up a bunch of cents to impress my friends (yeah, I was that kind of kid...). Funny thing is, she still uses those scissors to this day, so I guess they were worth what she paid for them .
Back in 1985 I opened my first metal fabrication shop. Back then companies and salesmen worked to "earn" business. I remember a (I think) Pexto salesman coming by to demonstrate and pitch a bench-top slitting machine. I remember one of his demonstrations was setting the slitters narrow and running pennies through it. The resulting shards looked very similar to what you posted here.
As it turns out, a cross-cutting paper shredder found in one's house can pretty much exactly replicate this effect, both with copper and plated zinc cents.
Added: If my math is correct then with roughly 156 g of metal, you have the result of somewhere between 50 and 62 individual cents' worth of metal there. Ignoring wear and tear on the paper shredder, this seems like a way to make a quick 4x-5x return.
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Posted 10/24/2021 5:14 pm
