Copper Hoarding - What's The Realistic Run Up?

Did the $18.50 profit include the ebay fees?

You're all right. I forgot ebay fees! It was free listing but final value fees and paypal fees cut my profit to about $12. Well, still better than 4% from the bank. Hardly worth the effort though.

what everone here is forgeting to take into account is the cost involved with melting the coins. so taday one copper penny is worth $0.0112 one nickel is worth $.0699. so lets say you have collected 10 million copper penny's. let me say, good luck storing them and have fun spending tens of thousands of hours sorting 100 million penny's just to find 10 million. so 10 million copper pennys are worth 100,000.00 us dollars. metal value is 112,000.00. sure sounds great. your thinking I just made 12 grand. think again. those pennys are not 100% copper and they must be shipped-melted-refined-shipped again. thats the basic method if your lucky. first of all just to ship the coins could very easily cost thousands of dollars. you cant just fit 10 million coins in your trunk and drive them to the plant. now the plant that melts and refines the coins isn't going to pay you anywhere near the $0.0112 per coin. the plant has alot of cost involved melting the coins into pure copper. if your lucky when all is done you have make 1-3 grand and oh ya its illegal. now figure you spent a modest sevan thousand hours sorting the coins. thats .42 cents a hour at 3 grand profit. .14 cents per hour at 1 grand. you probly have perminent red hands too and arthritis. as long as you had fun. right? some day copper might be worth ten times what it is today then yes, it would possibly be worth the effort. but do you really think the goverment is going to let everyone cash in there copper coins for profit. even if they do make it legal they will make it impossible for you and I to ever make a red cent cashing in copper coins.

Yeah copper pennies are now roughly 3x face, so your 10 million pennies are now $300,000 in metal value.

I do expect the government to allow the melting of pennies again at some point. It'll probably be when the percentage of circulating copper falls, and their useful life has past. it's been 29 years since the change over to zincolns, so I don't think it'll be all that much longer.

Only thing I see preventing the lift of the ban is if the government doesn't fix the current alloy issues with zincolns and nickels. Zincolns are around .6 cents of metal, if the metal content of zincolns exceeds face, they won't lift the ban. The ban on nickels will stay till they fix that alloy issue too.

I didn't mention the average copper rate for most of us is between 25-35%...guess it would help to have all the info

I don't get why people think it's such a chore to hold onto copper cents. Your going through them anyway. So you have one extra jar or a bucket in the basement, whatever. Searching a box looking for a microscopoc notch in a mint mark or letter is a chore.

Wow, I gotta shop where you guys are shopping. I'm not finding and gold and silver in my change.

Agreed.

I'm not hoarding for a big score on coppper hitting a high number down the road or a ban being lifted. Just picking up a little extra cash when it's right in front of you.