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 Replies: 22 / Views: 3,211 |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2368 Posts |
Most CRHers have noticed that 1943 steel pennies are very scarce in rolls (well, 1944 steels too, but that's another story...). My guess is the ones that survived the mass government collection and destruction of the coins made it through circulation. Maybe the machines used by the fed to roll the coins for banks reject the magnetic steels, thinking they're slugs, and destroy them. Customers rolling pennies would mistake them for dimes unless they're rusted. What does everybody else think? Post your steel penny luck from CRH! Please specify if the roll you found it in was MWR of CWR.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1109 Posts |
I've never thought about it before, but I have never found one while CRHing.
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Rest in Peace
United States
10625 Posts |
I've got about two full rolls of steel cents I found CRHing in the early/mid 70's. I don't recall any shot gun rolls back then.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4333 Posts |
My wife, a loan officer, brought me home two solid rolls of "silver pennies."
When I listen to LED ZEPPELIN...so do my neighbors...
Roll hunting since '77
Dirt fishing since '72
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2589 Posts |
Virtually all coin counting machines today use a series of two or more magnets to prevent the majority of foreign coins from being accepted by the machines. Since steel cents are magnetic, the coin counting machines prevent them from being counted and simply pull them up towards the magnets to be held until the staff clean the magnets. The only steel cents to get into circulation are thus either spent by a consumer at a store and then given back out as change by the same store or if one is incredibly lucky a machine may malfunction (generally due to too much magnetic coins adhering to the magnets). I have only ever found 2 steel cents roll hunting and both were very dirty leading me to believe that the dirty helped reduce their magnetivity.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
19150 Posts |
I've found 6 in something like 1,200+ rolls. About the same ratio as teens (for me at least). Considering steel cents were issued 70 years ago and have been on the decline since, it doesn't surprise me that numbers are dwindling.
Interesting question would be, how many wheat cents of all types are pulled from circulation daily by roll and change hunters...100, 300, 800? Sure, some make it back into circulation, but not many.
Some urban areas are probably picked pretty clean while others are less so. Wonder what urban area is most heavily picked over...NY metro area, DC metro area, other?
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
19150 Posts |
Thought I'd add that 5 of the 6 steel cents were from customer wrapped rolls, the other from a bank wrapped roll. I agree with Xavier...
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Valued Member
United States
166 Posts |
I quit doing pennies a few months ago (I wanted $100 face value in copper pennies and searching a box of pennies for like 5 wheat cents from the 50's wasn't worth it for me) I did however find one steel penny in a customer wrapped roll.
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New Member
United States
30 Posts |
I've never found any coin roll hunting, but I just bought 250 for $20 so they aren't very expensive right now.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
8137 Posts |
I found one that is so rusty that you could not see the date. My guess is that People kept them as oddities while the rest were collected by the government or they got rusted by circulation and were mistook for regular pennies.
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
2805 Posts |
I have found two in Canada!! Since the last of our pennies were made of copper-plated steel, it wouldn't do to pull out magnetic pennies. So those steelies found a safe haven here... until 2012  |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
950 Posts |
My only steelie (Well, my only wild caught one anyway) came from the reject bin at a Wells Fargo. I was very surprised to see it.
I think their scarcity was caused by a combination of things.
Magnets take most of them, and the ones that are recognizable as steel pennies are probably being hoarded because people percieve them to be super special.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1053 Posts |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2541 Posts |
I've pulled a few out of the back of the coin hopper at TD Bank. I've also pulled about $10 of modern Canadian coins. Sometimes the tellers won't let me, other times I just do it and hope they don't yell at me.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
5207 Posts |
Up until a month ago I had never found a steel cent in a box.
Then I got 2 from 1 box and another one last week.
I always figured it was the magnets in the counting machines since I hadn't found any up to that point and I had one teller pull out a handful of them and ask me how much they were worth. He said he got them off of the magnet in their counter.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6130 Posts |
Since the steel cent is the only magnetic coin that the US has ever made, most machines do use a magnet to either catch or reject all magnetic coins. This explains why new (2000s) Canadian cents are almost impossibe to find in the US, while older (1950s-90s) ones are pretty easy to find.
The only steelie cents that end up in bank rolls are those that were either manually loaded, or loaded by a machine that isn't good at sorting out foreigns. Personally, I've never seen one in circulation.
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Replies: 22 / Views: 3,211 |
Posted 10/15/2013 5:43 pm
