Hoarding Pre 82's For The Coming New Year Coin....?

Well, I've been hoarding pre-82s only because the intrinsic is higher than the face. I've already have a large bucket of it... about 50-80 pounds of pennies

Hope your wife doesn't find out!

I agree with coppercoins but I do have a large zip-lock bag full of pre 82 LC's. I just rolled a bunch after looking for varieties and errors and took em down to my savings acc't.

coppercents is right and so isbmanofnbc.

Don't let it get out of hand or you may end up having to sell your collection because your wife will force you

So with that logic, if silver got down to $1.40 per oz nobody should hoard it for the future? I disagree, hold what you can afford to and cash in the rest.

Perhaps so regarding silver, but even then silver was priced by the ounce - not by the pound. It also wasn't illegal to melt it.

It takes a LOT more cents to make the same money as silver, even if silver were only $2 an ounce. Copper would have to go past $10 a pound to make the same profitability, and it's never been past $5 per pound. Right now it's only $1.62 per pound. This whole cent hoarding thing started when copper was above $4 per pound.

I see the point, really I do. Bicentennial quarters by the BU roll used to be junk - many were spent. Now they are much more difficult to find, and actually bring a premium. Even just ten years ago you couldn't sell them for over face, and now they are hard to find under double face.

But I just doubt seeing copper go to the levels it would need to go to in order to make hoarding bags of brass cents a profitable venture before ending up with half a ton of them.

Another thing to watch out for...Great Britain demonitized their half pence at one time and stuck people with a bunch of them. If the U.S. does stop making one cent coins, it won't take long to demonitize them. Once that happens, you'll have a limited period to turn them in to the bank or take the loss. If copper is at current levels then, you'll lose money on them trying to melt them.

In that case, hoard all you can get while you can get it, because numbers are definitely dwindling.

Back in the 1960s it was still common to find wheat cents in pocket change. In fact, half of all the cents you would have pulled from your pocket would be wheats up until around 1968. As we all know, early wheats were still circulating until the memorials came out. Once the memorials started making a distinguishing difference between the older coins and the newer coins, people started taking notice of the dates on the wheats and started pulling the earlier ones out of change. In the 70s there was a wholesale 'pulling out' of wheats in change. So much that by 1980 finding a wheat in change was a two coin per roll affair.

We are now in a period where something has happened that has caused people to take notice again, and the older circulating cents are disappearing. In part because of simple attrition, and in part because of content. It's becoming quite difficult to fill a memorial album out of change now because of the S mint cents and the early 1960s cents...this will only become more difficult over time.

Rolls from the 1960s aren't much (if any) harder to find now than they were 20 years ago. The part that's harder to find now is rolls that haven't already been cherrypicked. The supply is definitely drained to a point where I can see an obvious difference from when I started buying rolls by the hundreds back around 1995. Back then it was very common to find dozens of BU wheat rolls, and memorial rolls were crowding the stock rooms of every dealer in the country. Now it's hard to find more than a couple of wheat rolls (and they want your arm for them) and BU memorial rolls are becoming somewhat scarce. Try buying a run of 1983P&D through 1995P&D just by going to shows...you'll spend a year doing it if you're lucky.

So yeah...if you're looking for stuff to cherrypick later, buy it now. Not only are prices only going up, but the supply is running out. I'm still going through rolls purchased ten years ago, because I spent a three-four year period buying every roll I could find reasonably priced and ended up with more than 5000 of them. I still buy when I find them, but it's become a lot less frequent and the prices are getting higher.

A couple of past examples that are never seen these days:

In 1999 I bought a date/mint set of BU rolls from 1936-1938 (nine rolls) for $250. Now those same rolls bid at $2,700.

In 2001 I bought 105 BU wheat rolls dating from 1942-1958, most dates included (no 1952S, no 1943D, and no 1943S). All rolls were BU. That deal cost me $1,100. Those same rolls now would be over $7,500.

In 2003 I bought 25 original rolls each of 1956D, 1957D, and 1958D (75 rolls) for $2 per roll ($150). The same lot now would bid over $700.

In 2003 I bought 400 BU memorial rolls at $1 each, take all or take none. I took all at $400. The same rolls now are worth over $1,500.

In 2005 I bought one 5,000 count bag of each, 1964, 1966, 1967, 1968D, 1968S, 1973 at $100 per bag. That's $600. Now JUST the 1966 and 1967 bags total $450. Sell the rest at face and make $50.

Deals like these don't come around any more...trust me, I wish they would. One of these days we'll be wishing we could have the days back of being able to find BU memorial rolls even in small groups.