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Pillar of the Community
United States
819 Posts |
How big is the Flat Rate box or one ton?
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1882 Posts |
Quote:
Copper is $3.0702 per pound, or $6,140.40 Lincoln cents are 95% copper...so the spot value of the ton is $5833. I don't think much, if any, money could be made on the deal until (unless) copper goes up again. But if could be fun to search! |
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
1406 Posts |
Flat rate boxes are about a foot cubed. From the picture on ebay a ton of cents looks like about 16 cubic feet. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1882 Posts |
The seller has smaller lots available, also as buy-it-now. 100 lbs can be purchased for $250, so he is giving a $105 discount from that rate for the larger purchase of 2 tons. So if anyone would rather just dabble...  |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1523 Posts |
Could you not be charged with defacing government property if you mented them down?
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1406 Posts |
Yep, I think it's a felony too.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3294 Posts |
I fail to see how the government can define a cent that you own as "their" property. Especially when you can melt down all the quarters you want without them getting upset.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1882 Posts |
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Yep, I think it's a felony too. The fact that these go for a significant discount to spot price is a reflection of it being illegal to melt the coins down. Making any significant money on it would be real work...and would require ownership of more than a mere ton of coins. Copper would have to increase significantly in price before reselling the unharmed coins to someone else could yield a good profit. Edited by steve199
02/12/2010 4:20 pm
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Moderator
 United States
189767 Posts |
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Copper would have to increase significantly in price before reselling the unharmed coins to someone else could yield a good profit. Agreed, which is why I would call this a long term play. I am keeping my copper (and nickels), but I do not expect to get rich off of them anytime soon. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1523 Posts |
I'm pretty sure they wouldn't give you their blessings for melting silver coins either.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1882 Posts |
Melting pre-1965 silver coins is not illegal.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
12437 Posts |
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Could you not be charged with defacing government property if you mented them down?
The melt ban has nothing to do with defacing government property. It is in place to prevent artificial shortages in the monetary supplies. Quote:
Especially when you can melt down all the quarters you want without them getting upset. Simple economics prevents the melting of quarters(and dimes for that matter)- they contain less than 10 cents worth of metal so you would lose money doing it. Quote:
I'm pretty sure they wouldn't give you their blessings for melting silver coins either. Silver coinage is considered to be noncirculating so it is perfectly legal to melt. However, there was a melt ban on silver coinage in the 1960s after it was withdrawn from circulation. |
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Valued Member
United States
258 Posts |
With copper pennies you can easily sell them for a premium over face value plus shipping costs. There are approximately 146 lincoln copper pennies per pound. If you only charged around $1.80 per pound you could sell them pretty quickly. I try to get around $2.25 per pound on mine but other sellers are charging a whole lot more.
I encourage all penny roll searchers to keep the copper ones. Just sell them for face value at the local coin store if you don't want them. Don't turn them back into the bank as it is a waste. Sincerely, John Leckrone
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
19969 Posts |
I have almost a 5 gal pail full of copper! I'm holding for now.
Lincoln Cent Lover!VERDI-CARE™ INVENTOR https://verdi.care/
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
17884 Posts |
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Melting pre-1965 silver coins is not illegal. But was illegal from 1964 through 1971. The law forbidding the melting of silver coins was repealed once the amount of silver still in circulation was small enough that the sudden removal of all of it would have a negligible effect on the supply of coins in circulation. Once the amount of copper cents in circulation drops low enough the law against melting them will most likely be repealed as well. One of the reasons for the existence of the law against melting the silver was to keep it in circulation while the Fed was pulling it out. The longer they could keep it in circulation the more of it the government could recover. I would not be surprised to see a repeat of that with the copper cents. Every $1.46 in copper cents the Fed can separate and withdraw is $3 in copper for the government. If the Fed can process a thousand bags of cents a day (Easy to do if you have machines doing the separating.), and you assume that only 25% of the cents in the bags are 95% copper that works out to $3,250,000 worth of copper per year. 1,000 bags per day is only 20 bags per state. There are a LOT of banks in every state so that 1,000 bag per day rate is probably extremely conservative. |
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Replies: 27 / Views: 3,520 |
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Posted 02/12/2010 3:21 pm
