Start Hoarding Lincoln Memorials?

I see your point and it makes sense in terms of the Wheat cent. However, if you buy two thousand dollars worth of brinks boxes and save them for the next however many years until you retire. Then on the day you are ready to cash in you open the boxes to find two thousand dollars worth of 2010 LSC's in brinks boxes. Just a thought.

Just use the rule of 72... let's say your bank averages 3% interest over the lifetime of your saving history (which is a low but realistic number). By dividing 72 by 3 you get 24. That means your investment will double in 24 years. So 1959....that is roughly 50 years ago, so your money would have doubled twice since then. That means if you instead put your $1000 in the bank in 1959...it would roughly be worth $4000 today. If by your estimation you could get 3 cents for each 1959 cent today....that would be $3000. The bank would be the better deal even at the low 3% interest. Even a 20 year treasury bond would beat 3%. Commodities ( which common date coins are ) almost never beat inflation long term and are usually linked directly to it so banks are usually the better bet in these cases.

apparently short term assets are bonds?

I think it's wise for people to keep a portion of their investments in metals. But be sensible about it. 100% is way too high and 5% is probably lower than would make a significant difference if inflation strikes hard.

10%, 20%, 50%? Probably up to you.

As a collector, you get the pleasure of just having the coins as well as any inflation hedge they offer.

Another consideration would be the effect of cents no longer being minted. Sooner or later that will happen.

Will cents become more collectable? I wonder how many years it took for large cents to become collectable after 1857?

Current interest rates are near historic lows, and are not a good way to judge long term performance of any particular investment. Also, a savings account at the bank is going to be one of the worst performing investments. You can easily do better with something like a CD, and a mutual fund or similar would do even better.

Only tripling your money since the 1959 would have been a TERRIBLE investment. That doesn't even beat inflation (which means you're losing money).

The S&P 500 was about 55 in Jan 1959 and is 1,317 today (and that's after an unprecedented 12 years of moving sideways). So you'd expect a $1000 investment in stocks in 1959 to get to something like $23,700 today (not adjusting for inflation).

Even if you restricted yourself to uncirculated rolls (assuming you can get them at face), it's dubious.

Greenprint... seriously. A lot of what you post sounds like you are trying to run a get rich scam or something.

If you want to make money off of coin then fine. But realise you are talking about speculating and not investing.

If that is the way you want to do the hobby that is fine. There is a lot of people that like doing this (and not just with coins).

But you are going to have to do some leg work. Not just magically getting a quarter ton of circulated crap from a bank and getting billions at some undetirmed later date.

If it was that easy everyone would do it and then it wouldn't be worth any money.

If you want to buy coins cheap now with the intent of flipping them at some point in the future (and there is nothing wrong with this) here is the secret:

Find something that is cheap and undervalued now that collectors in the future will want and greatly desire.

That is all. It is that simple.

In your previous senario. Why would someone pay a lot of money for a bunch of crappy and corroded zinc pennies. They are probably not going to pay top dollar for something like that.

You need to look at trends, mintages, errors, etc. Here are some examples:

1. Buying coins from up and coming industrial nations. You can probably purchase a whole bunch of mint condition coins from a country that is not a world power for extreamly cheap. The idea being that after they have an industrial revolution and get a growing middle class, down the road people will have more disposible income and you will have a larger base of collectors.

However, there can be problems. What if you hoarded the wrong and undesirable stuff? What if the "next world super power" pettered out? Decades ago everyone thought that the Philippines were going to be the next big country in the world. They are a trash heap today. It didn't pan out. I can buy mint condition Philippine coins by the pound for 8 bucks at coin shops. Unless they are silver then it is pretty much spot price for them. Sure there are some highly collectible coins from the Philippines but nothing like if a large market base would have developed.

2. Collect common coins that are conditionally rare. There are several threads already about this. During certain years there were no mint sets produced. Amida17 aluded to this idea when commenting on the early BU zinc cents. There are billions of zinc cents out there, but most of them are in really bad condition. A lot of people think that in a few decades there will be very few left that are in a collectible condition.

3. Hoard some sleeper coins. Sleeper coins are coins that have collecting potential put are not heavily collected yet. Jbuck has a tread about Newfoundland coins. Newfoundland coins are largely ignored by most Canadian collectors and they also have low mintages. I sometimes find them in the junk bins. Some of them were minted in the 40's so they are not that old so a lot of people don't consider them "rare" or "classic" or whatever. There may be potential there.... Or they may not be and maybe everyone will hate Newfoundland in the future.

4. Low mintage modern coins. Some of the modern commemortive dollars have very low mintages. If you got some uncirculated stacks of those they might pay out. The fractional platinum coins have very low mintages. There are different finishes on coins that are limited (matte, satin, etc).

5. Collect already rare coins in high grade. If the coins are already rare and there is already a market base this may be a good option. People will probably collect U.S. coins for years to come. Or the whole economy could tank next year and the whole market for U.S. coins could fail and never recover. It could happen. No nation last forever. I find coins in the junk box all the time from nations that once ruled the world. You can buy a lot of Roman coins that were worth a days wage at the time for.... get this.... about a days wage today. Almost 2000 years and it has only kept up with inflation. Of course there are more collectable ones but you get the point.

If you want to sell you coins for a lot of money in the future you have to do the work. Look at population reports from different grading companies to find oportunties. Look for low mintage coins. Find sleeper coins. Find undervalued coins. Look at the cycles of the market, etc., etc., etc.

That will be a better way than just getting a quarter ton of a bunch of crappy and rotted zinc cents and sitting on them.

Unless zinc takes an unexpected price hike or the mint begins systematically destroying circulated cents, this is not an investment that will pay off in the next hundred years. Wheat cents are barely worth anything now, and you have to remember that the 1982 saw production on the scale that you could give several to every human being currently alive and still have some left over. Everything is worth something given a long enough time frame, but only when it becomes rare or scarce.

I inherited from my grandfather a commemorative token/penny for some of Britain's victories during the napoleonic wars. Thinking it was surely worth quite a bit, I looked it up to find that it currently books for about $5, due to the excessively high mintage of that coin. That is nearly 200 years later.

Hoarding '09 pennies may be a worthwhile investment, along with choice uncirculated memorial cents. But hoard everything, and you will spend more just to get it out of your basement than your profits on any sales.

Honestly, scrap the whole idea of hoarding large quantities of crappy circulated cents.

As others have suggested perhaps look into certain dates and or very high grade coins.

Other than that i'd give up your get rich plans around hoarding cents.

You mention in your OP that you were thinking of $1000 to cash in for $4000 in 40 years time. Over the course of 40 years do you really think youre going to give a crap about $3000. Imagine carting them between houses if you decide to move

Hoarding any old pennies and not targeting which ones you keep is a plan old stupid/idiotic idea.