Are Copper Pennies Worth The Closet Space?

I have a small hoard (maybe $50 face or so), but it's all incidental from searching penny boxes. If you're already searching boxes it's probably profitable to separate the copper and flip it, but unless you fork over the $$$ for a ryedale and have some massive source of pennies "everything" is probably right. Hand sorting the amount of coins necessary to make it worth your while just takes too long if you're solely doing it for resale value.

Here's another benefit to hoarding.

Let's say you have $50 face value. It's easy to take a $50 bill, turn around and ....hey! where'd that $50 go? With pennies, that's not so easy. You prettymuch have to take them to the bank and deposit them first. You could be a jerk and try to spend them, but most people wouldn't.

So anyway I look at it as a slush fund... it's still there if you decide you need it, but that extra step encourages you to think about it 1st. And it is likely appreciating in value, at least a little.

Note that you don't really need to sort pennies to hoard. You can just weigh the roll and annotate based on that the % copper. That lets you derive copper melt value of the roll:

# COPR Weight % Copper

0 125 2.50%
5 128.05 11.75%
10 131.1 21.00%
15 134.15 30.25%
20 137.2 39.50%
25 140.25 48.75%
30 143.3 58.00%
35 146.35 67.25%
40 149.4 76.50%
45 152.45 85.75%
50 155.5 95.00%

Two pages of replies........still no Oceanwhisperer....