I Have A Lot To Learn About Searching Rolls!

keep the coppers only if you want to because you believe copper value will increase down the road. might as well get some folders and make a circulated set while you're at it!

Scooby Due, that makes tremendous sense. With copper on the rise, I could definitely see how these older cents will become harder and harder to find. My favorite collection is of course my Lincolns which I have been collecting for years but from an investment view I definitely see how hoarding copper definitely makes sense. Cheers.

Well, the argument to keep all copper is a good one. I went through a box of lincolns over the course of the day and tonight. Ended up with about 8 rolls of copper. I figure if I am going to go through them anyway looking for 2009, 2010 and wheaties, I may as well make the most of it. If at some point my wife goes nuts I may have to cash them in. I figure I have enough hiding places for awhile though. :-)

Make sure you are also looking for varieties, errors, etc. Alot of folks also keep BU/AU cents to make rolls. I do this, and have completed rolls of most of the 1960's in AU/BU condition from roll searching this year.

I want to start hoarding copper but the amount I get in change is a very high percentage. I would have almost nothing to take back to the bank when my search was over lol
I do have one roll pulled from circulation of each mint mark and date tho, so I guess thats my little hoard

There is a forum that is really devoted to this issue, called realcent. They are obviously at the end of the perspective that values teh copper penny ofr its value as a (potential) commodity. There are even sorting machines developed to separate the copper from the zinc. At the end of the day, when you collect coppers, the loss in investment is simply the time you put in, as a penny is still a penny regardless of its value as a copper. The folks at realcent have posted pictures of pallets loaded with boxes of copper pennies. That is another huge porblem with collecting coppers. Pretty soon, you could run out of room. That is not gonna happen with silver or gold hoarders.

Also, keep in mind that this forum is more numismatic oriented. Dates (meaning to me numismatics) will always take precedence on this forum.

Personally, I keep my coppers. That silver is 13x face is no longer a reality, because you really can't get much silver from roll hunting. If I search a box of pennies, I keep the coppers. Like I said, I enjoyed the roll hunt for something I need numismaitcally, and it's no problem to keep the coppers (most people hold onto wheats that have little numismatic value). In a decent box of pennies, the copper percentage is around 20%.

jbuck - I agree about not melting coins, both for numismatic reasons and for practicality.

If you start saving Lincolns as copper bullion, you don't save them for the possibility of melting them down when the ban is lifted. The cost of melting is too expensive. You save them because you know the amount of copper that is in each cent. People who stack silver don't buy $100.00 bag of 90% silver with the intention of melting them and making bars. They do them because they know that every $100.00 FV of 90% silver, for those denominations that are less than $1.00, contains 71.5 Toz of silver. Bullion is a means of storing wealth.