1982 Pennies - Anything Worth Looking For And Keeping?

AHH Yes that famous melt value. OK, so just where are you going to get that famous melt value for pennies? Are you going to take them to a smelter, or is there some store that will buy them from you? People always say MELT VALUE for pennies but no one ever says where to get that. Around me people just throw in those Copper Cents with other Copper or Brass items when they take them to a smelter. Usually get about a small fraction of face value for them. Is it worth all the trouble? I just put them all back in circulation.

sa - deciding which of the cents are more valuable seems to be relative to your geographical location. In the northeast, the 1982 D LD zinc is the hardest to find for me as I've only found 3 or 4 in a volume of probably three times what you are showing there. As for the split, you can do an Advanced Search here to see what folks are finding for each variety to perhaps give you some insight as to which you might want to save.

Regarding copper hoarding, there are many here who do it and a few who are even turning a profit selling copper cents by the box full on ebay. It seems that there is a segment of the coin collecting population banking on the notion that they will eventually be able to cash in on the price of copper and the others are willing to cash in on that thinking. While we have seen the positive impact on precious metal coinage, the metal value is several times that of face value. This isn't true of copper cents and probably will never see the value get more than 3 or 4X face. And the laws would have to change to allow folks to melt US currency, which seems unlikely in the near term. So....to hoard....or not to hoard?

In my opinion, I don't see the point in hoarding copper cents (unless these cents have numismatic interest and just happen to be copper). But to each their own. If you have the space and your wife/husband isn't riding you about the piles of pennies, have-at-it. Otherwise, I think rolling your CRH copper cents makes better...sense.

CRH = Coin Roll Hunting

Coincidentally today I went through all the '82 zinc cents I've pulled while CRH in order to populate the '82 zinc varieties in my Whitman. Out of roughly 150, I think I only came up with one 82 (P) small date. Well over half were the 82 (P) large date and quite a few 82D small date.

Interesting split there Celtic. I did my sorting some time ago, but as I recall, LDs prevailed but were approximately a 50/50 split copper/zinc. SD were less common and SD D mint lesser so. I still keep the best I come across but otherwise, back into circulation they go.

Realmoney - surely it's your prerogative (no judgment) but keep in mind that the money you tie up in copper hoarding might be better leveraged against coins you need/want or better spent buying silver/gold bullion. If I were to bank on ROI from copper, silver or gold hoarding (where some of my money was tied up for an extended period), I would put my money to buying the latter two.

Welcome to CCF!

The difference between saving silver coins and copper ones is that there is a ready market for consumer quantities of silver coins while there isn't for copper.

One can walk into any coin store, "Cash for Gold" joint etc. and get something over face value for a handful of silver coins. Try that with any quantity of pennies and they will either tell you no or offer face (or less) just to get rid of you and see if there are any keepers among the chaff.

Keep an eye open for red, gem grade, examples. These are hard to find > MS-65 and without a lot of plating bubbles. The 82P coppers are generally horrible, finding a well-struck coin free of marks is very difficult.

1982 is the first year for zinc cents. As I recall, it had something to do with the transition from copper to zinc planchets...the Mint tweaking the mfg process.