Results here - Percentage of copper cents in circulation (vs copper plated zinc)

PreTurb

For what it's worth - a small sampling from Connecticut:

From 240 random cents thrown in a bin over the last 3 months or so...

Copper 48 pieces (20%)
Cu plated Zinc 192 pieces (80%)

Does anyone else show similar results?

CalGold

These results are not surprising. Many many people dump their pennies into a coffee can or similar receptical rather than carry them around. The result is that cents fall out of circulation very quickly and the mint has to keep churning out new ones while gazillions of old ones are sitting around in people's houses. So the coppers are in coffee cans and the ones in circulation are mostly recently struck zincs.

CG

cullenbryant

<< <i>Copper 48 pieces (20%) >>


my math might be off but using 1.4x it looks like you now have 67 cents

that could be worth the effort if a person had access to many cents.

cladking

Off the top of my head I'd guess about 20% around here. This is way up from ten years ago
and seems to be caused by Coinstar which gets a lot of penny back into circulation.

The mint could be making an extra 25 or 30 billion cents to replace these over the next couple
years. Using their numbers they lose about a quarter cent on each of these at current zinc prices.