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 Replies: 13 / Views: 1,851 |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2224 Posts |
I was reading a couple of threads in the Canadian forum that mentioned that the Canadian government might be hoarding the copper coins in circulation there and melting them for profit to offset the losses that they are sustaining from the metal costs of coin production. What does everyone think of the chances that the US might try the same thing? The Mint is losing a ton of money producing cents and nickels, and, despite the current studies going on and bills being proposed in Congress to change the metal content it would appear that cents and nickels will continue to be minted in their current compositions for at least the foreseeable future, mainly due to politics. Obviously nothing could be done with the nickels, as they are all worth a premium for their metal content, but the Mint could offset a lot of that cost by mandating that the various armored services use machinery to separate the copper cents from the zinc and have them returned to the government for melting. The Mint would obviously only pay face value for the coins, along with possibly a small amount to cover the costs of separation. Opinions? Could this happen here? I'm personally hoarding every copper cent I can get, thinking of the possibility!
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Bedrock of the Community
13014 Posts |
If they were to get rid of them they absolutely would in a second. The problem is plenty of people already are doing that and I would guess a pretty significant percentage of them are sitting in buckets in garages around the country
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
2224 Posts |
I am still finding on average about 25% of the cents I find in bank rolls are copper. That is a pretty high percentage. There might be lower amounts in different parts of the country, but going by those numbers there are probably still many billions of copper cents that the government could get their hands on. I agree with you; many billions are sitting in coffee cans, or being hoarded by people like myself. But, I feel that the opportunity is there, and what is to keep the government from jumping at that opportunity?
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Valued Member
United States
139 Posts |
What we see in circulation is nothing by what the Federal Reserve can get their hands on. If they require a hold on cents, or a call back on certain amount. They can get billions of dollars in, and melt everything all at once and just separate through processes.
I am sure the Mint, and Reserve already have plans for that if it came to that.
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Valued Member
United States
162 Posts |
If they take a bunch of coppers out of circulation, they'll just have to mint more zincs to make up the difference. I doubt it's worth the expense.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1195 Posts |
You miss the point, Ziggy. Canada has STOPPED minting their cents. IF they horde their copper, THEN total number of cents in circulation in Canada will dwindle due to private and gov't hording of copper and private collecting of non-copper.
The US will probably follow a similar pattern.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
20753 Posts |
Interesting ideas though. Makes me wonder how many of our Copper Cents are being melted in Mexico and/or Canada. Easy to get just go to banks along the border and get massive rolls of Cents. Take back home and melt the Copper ones. Why not? So many of our own people are doing exactly that.
Our government could do that too except one small problem. In Mexico you could find people that would work cheap enough to make that profitable. However, at what we pay our government employees, that would be a real loss.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
12437 Posts |
They did the same thing with silver in the mid-late 1960s so there is no reason why it could not happen again with copper.
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Valued Member
United States
162 Posts |
"You miss the point, Ziggy. Canada has STOPPED minting their cents. IF they horde their copper, THEN total number of cents in circulation in Canada will dwindle due to private and gov't hording of copper and private collecting of non-copper.
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This was a question about what the US might do, not Canada. As long as we're minting the penny we are in na entirely different position than Canada.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1195 Posts |
The US might follow Cananda's example and stop minting cents, then they'll start hording copper to go into the minting of the other denominations
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Bedrock of the Community
13014 Posts |
Copper you must have very good luck with the rolls, but I am sure a lot of it does have to do with where you live. I dont doubt at all that there is still a ton of copper cents out there and would definitely make the mint a pretty penny if we got rid of the penny and melted them. At the same time I wouldnt be surprised either if someone told me that 1/5 or 1/4 of all copper cents are sitting in garages around the country waiting for that day to basically make free money
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Moderator
 United States
188736 Posts |
If cent production ceases then I would be surprised if the government did not make an effort to reclaim the copper from circulation.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
17884 Posts |
Quote:
Easy to get just go to banks along the border and get massive rolls of Cents. Take back home and melt the Copper ones. Currently the law restricts exports of cents to no more than $5. Quote:
Our government could do that too except one small problem. In Mexico you could find people that would work cheap enough to make that profitable. However, at what we pay our government employees, that would be a real loss.
In the late 60's the Fed had machines that separated the clad from the silver coins. I'm sure they could do that again to separate the copper and zinc. I'm sure they have machines that can separate a bag in less than a minute or two. If a typical bag is 20% copper that is $10 in copper sorted out every 2 mintes. Copper values say twice face that's $10 profit every two minutes or $300 an hour. In the debates for changing the coin compositions to steel they ave pointed out cost saving in materials in production and they have also discussed the profit potential of separating out the copper and copper nickel coins and recovering the metal. So yes I would expect them to start recovering and melting the copper cents if they change to alloy to steel or discontinue the cent. |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
20753 Posts |
Quote:
Currently the law restricts exports of cents to no more than $5. And we have laws against murder, robbery, rape, etc. and yet inspite of the law, people still do that too. Quote:
However, at what we pay our government employees, that would be a real loss.
Guess I should have added a  |
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Replies: 13 / Views: 1,851 |
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Posted 04/26/2012 11:59 pm
