Are You Hoarding Copper Pennies? Poll

I do hoard them, but I feel hoard is too strong a word. I only roll search cents once every few months.

I can say that it has become apparent to me that many others are hoarding them as my last box of cents was only about 5% copper. It was 20% just 1 year ago, then about 15%, then about 12ish and now they're almost rare.

I also see people on craigslist advertise their huge 10000+ collections of hoarded coppers.

I hope they raise the law on melting them. Everyone will go and take the rest out of circulation and melt them. These same people will decide to keep their wheaties because they're "special". Before long copper memorials will be more rare than all post-34 wheaties and will sell for around 10c per coin. That's when I'll cash in.

Time is money. If I figure out how much time I would spend hoarding pennies, the return is less than the minimum wage. I can do better than that elsewhere, then if I want copper cents for investment purposes, I can buy them from people who do not value their time very highly.

I don't ever see me investing in copper cents. Too much time & space for too little return.

simba, I'm sorry. I'd be kicking myself if I just bought an investment (even if small) that just had its biggest percentage drop in decades on your first day.

I don't follow where the 11% came from at the end. The rest of the post which I do understand I don't entirely agree with. As far as "losing" money because of a copper drop, it wouldn't matter because he couldn't have melted it down anyway. So his face value cents sold could not have had a gain or loss (unless you figure in inflation).

Then, regardless of this, the investment in silver at that specific point in time being the biggest percentage drop in history is a completely independent factor. I don't find it logical to compare it to any other form of profit/loss from the sale of cents. To what end, how might his money have done in roulette in Vegas, or as part of a mutual fund, it doesn't matter, as I see it.

I sort and hoard them. I am amazed at how many complain about the space. A 55 gallon drum will hold about 1 ton.

Copper is one of the three classical monetary metals along with silver and gold.

By the time it is worth the space (and weight!) to hoard them it will be to late to get much out of the attempt.

Same for so-called "junk" silver.

Because even now it seems possibly not worth the space and weight to hoard them is precisely why we still are in a good window of time to do so.

One must be tenacious and patient - with plenty of gold to meet possible near-term liquidity needs because of one's own vulnerability as one can't always easily sell silver bars and coins at the metal price.

Remember that most persons are miles out of touch with these subjects and the transformation will take several years more time even if a crisis happens.

During this year's crisis of the Belarus ruble the great mass of persons in Belarus have been fighting tooth and nail for U.S. dollars, not silver coins at the coin shops.

Much more time may be needed.

EDITED due to the lack of English usage over here!

I'm not actively searching for them, but I save the ones I get in change.

Count me in with the group that doesn't save pennies. Collecting them to fill an album would be one thing but saving them for the copper in the hope that one day it will be legal to melt them down doesn't work for me. Best of luck to all who do collect them for their copper value. There's something for everyone in the coin / bullion collecting realm.



Indeed it is. My thought is that "hoard" in its various forms is a demeaning word most often applied to those who have prepared for disaster by those who have not. Somehow, this makes those who are prepared for trouble "the bad guys". Notice that the unprepared are never referred to as "idiots" or "incompetents", or just plain "lazy", although words such as these do not suffer from inaccuracy in this context.



Thanks for not competing with me in the so-called "junk" silver market. I collect some US 90% silver coins, have some really nice examples thereof, and greatly appreciate others not bidding up the prices!