Is It Worthwhile To Hoard Copper Pennies?

I keep mine separate.

I only have my Wheaties wrapped. All the others are kept in plastic containers.

My "hoard" is not large. I doubt I will ever reap a profit from them. My real goal is to find some kid who may be excited to have them for searching.

I would never sell them for melt, legal or not. These large hoards will be melted eventually, so I want to make sure something is saved for future generations.

Basement slab?

We are in agreement.

This operation seems to be doing pretty well with their penny bulk.
Warning: If you are sensitive about what happens to some old cents,
such as wholesale hot melt destruction, you might not want to watch this.

President Trump recently announced that the US Mint will stop minting cents. Maybe I should feel some vindication here

At the current copper price there is about 3.2 cents worth of copper in each cent. So 10,000 cents ($100) weighing 68 pounds is worth about $320 with copper at $4.64/lb.

They would then have to be transported and refined to get pure copper so figure you could sell them for 2 cents each. You'd need to haul around 68 pounds of pre-82 cents to make $100. Plus the time and effort to sort, which most of us would be doing by hand. If you're time is worth more than $1/hour to you? You'd be making nothing.

Comparing apples, the Pre-1982 95% copper cents to oranges, the Zincoln.