Do dealers actually pay premiums for pre-1983 copper cents?
lsica
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Do dealers actually pay premiums for pre-1983 copper cents? Just wondering if I should weed them out of a jar of coins I have tagged for a CoinStar...
Philately will get you nowhere....
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Not unless you mean like 80 years pre
So nothing at all? Not even something like 60-70c a roll?
dunno about memorials, but wheats carry a premium
the problem with memorial bronze cents is that it is still illegal to melt cents, though if they are no longer produced, who knows.
nickels are also illegal to melt
Teeeeeechincally it's not illegal to melt cents, you just can't legally profit from selling them in their melted form
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No.
No, why would they, you get them in change for face.
What is the current melt value of pre-zinc copper Lincoln cents? Anyone know?
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"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
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Coinflation says...
Base Metal Coin Melt Value Calculation
Generated on March 2, 2025.
Values Used:
Total Face Value: $.01
Coin Type: 1909-1982 Lincoln Copper Cent
Copper Price: $4.2665 / pound
Zinc Price: $1.2627 / pound
Answer:
Total melt value is $0.03.
Statistics:
» There are 0.0065 pounds of copper and 0.0003 pounds of zinc in $.01 face value of copper cent(s).
» A roll of copper cent(s) has 50 coins and is valued at $1.41 when copper is at $4.2665 / lb and zinc at $1.2627 / lb (exact value is $1.411148526293).
» The 1943 steel cent is not made of copper and should be excluded from the values calculated above.
They're traded 24/7, 365 in their current form, and for spot or above, so no need to melt.
A legal tender US coin going through the early stages of Gresham's Law...
I don't know of any dealers that buy them, but I've heard of people buying and selling them on ebay. I think the current copper value in a cent is somewhere around 2.7-2.8 cents worth of copper in a cent. Even if it became legal to scrap them, you wouldn't get anywhere near full copper value, because they are alloyed. I personally can't see it being worthwhile, how much of your time would it take to cull out 1000 cents, then if you sell them for double face you'd make a whopping ten dollars! If you want to scrap metal you'd come out much farther ahead just gathering scrap aluminum, copper pipe, wire etc. I know, I've done that.
This once again highlights the folly of relying on Coinflation's calculations of "scrap metal value".
Coin collectors/hoarders/investors are competing with scrap metal merchants for the lowest bid, because if coin collectors refuse to pay the lowest bid, then the scrap metal merchants will. To obtain the actual scrap metal value for an alloy (like coinage bronze), you don't simply add up the cost of all the pure ingredients (like Coinflation does). That's because we don't have any magical black box technology that can de-mix a piece of alloy and turn it back into neat little piles of pure elements for zero cost.
Instead, to work out the scrap price of an alloy, you take the scrap price of the most valuable or abundant component (in this case, the copper) and then subtract the cost of the energy, time and effort needed to refine and separate that component. In the case of bronze pennies, the small amount of zinc is probably not going to be economically viable to recover, except for the largest operators where economy of scale might make it worthwhile.
Example: the current market rate for scrap "red brass" - which is what a scrap metal merchant would call coinage bronze - is around $2.20 per pound. That's considerably less than the $4.20 per pound for pure copper; the difference is the cost required to turn that pound of brass back into pure copper. At that rate, a pound of pennies (145 coins, or $1.45 face) would earn you $2.20. Yes, that's still more than face, and so technically would be "profitable" - but would severely cut into the margins of anyone attempting to recycle pennies for profit.
This is of course the explanation why war nickels always trade for significantly less than their nominal Coinflation value - because their true scrap value is the value of the silver, minus the cost of removing the manganese and refining that silver back up to .999 fine.
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I think you have to be naive and desperate to think that speculation in copper via the bronze Lincoln cents. You have to “invest” so much in them to make decent return. If you want to speculate in copper, the futures market would be a better alternative.
My numismatic time is too limited as it is, I'd much rather spend it studying, and searching for rarer and needed varieties in my collecting field. I'll be dadgummed if I'll spend it sorting common cents to try to make a few cents!
Which is why hoarding the disc has always made no sense to me- Throw them back in circulation for others to find!
WS
No
I don't know why you think they would. Are you willing to pay $1 per roll?
I have seen dealers pay $2 a roll for wheat cents.
Don't say that to @compromonedas :
RGDS!
This approach is not incompatible with socking away copper cents. It's all about leveraging efforts. If someone is searching for cent errors or varieties then it's no extra effort to toss the copper in one pile and the zinc in another.
It still might not be worth it from a financial perspective, of course.
Assuming you mean a pre-1983 copper cent that has been culled by a sophisticated eye. In other words, a plain old brown penny, in lower grade, with no scarcity. There are many examples of the opposite, errors, and key dates etc.
According to my google AI search: "The metalic value of a pre-1983 penny is calculated based on the copper and zinc content. The copper cent (1909-1982) has a melt value of $0.03, with 0.0065 pounds of copper and 0.0003 pounds of zinc2. These pennies are worth holding onto due to their copper content3."
Pre-1983 have more metalic value than post 1983 of course. Meanwhile with inflation around 3% they are more worthless every year. But did you know that pre-1982 pennies are not all made of the SAME mixture of copper?
"To be precise: Copper pennies made up until 1962 had a 5% balance of tin and zinc, and from 1962 to 1982 the extra 5% of material was entirely zinc."
For what its worth, even the zinc in a new penny is worth more than 1cent.
Since it is illegal for anyone other than the US Mint to melt down the pennies, they are still worth face value, which will apparently always be 1c - less than the melt value, and less than collector value.
Although most dealers think of any coin that isn't really collectible as being worth less than face value, there may be a dealer who pays a premium if they are uncirculated and sorted out by year and mintmark.
Most dealers wont take them, or will charge you a convenience fee for getting rid of your 100lb bag of old pennies. Even coin star, which charges you to get rid of them, right?
I have bags of old wheat cents, and pre-1983 coins. I'm thinking about putting them in rolls and dumping them on EBay, but on second thought.... naaah. Just hoard them, or give them away.
I am surprised there is no executive order stopping the minting of pennies yet and there is no order lifting the melting ban.
PART 82—5-CENT AND ONE-CENT COIN REGULATIONS
Authority:31 U.S.C. 5111(d).
Source:72 FR 61055, Oct. 29, 2007, unless otherwise noted.
§ 82.1 Prohibitions.
Except as specifically authorized by the Secretary of the Treasury (or designee) or as otherwise provided in this part, no person shall export, melt, or treat:
(a) Any 5-cent coin of the United States; or
(b) Any one-cent coin of the United States.
(later it mentions war nickels are excepted)
The dealers located near me will only buy wheat cents and they aren’t particularly thrilled with them. Eventually someone will buy a bunch of them for whatever reason. No dealer in their right mind is going to waste their time looking for 1982 and earlier memorial cents. As Ben Franklin said, “time is money”.
OK, to clarify what I meant in my original post: I'm not doing this as an "investment", and I'm not spending any time doing this in addition to whatever time it takes to sort through an already existing jar of change. I was just wondering if in my process of pulling out the silver/wheaties/etc before dumping the jar in the CoinStar machine it would actually be worth it to set aside the 95% copper cents along with the other "etc" I may find. And yes I do know the restrictions on melting them so I'm not looking to do that either.
I'm not sure why they'd have to be melted. Plenty of 90% silver trades hands constantly at a premium without needing to be melted so I assume that's the ask and expectation here. It's financially viable to do with silver being relatively easy to sort and getting a ~20x return. Otherwise with pennies the labor involved is just too much effort to verify what you have and wait for a market to develop that will pay a premium. Some day that may happen but until then it's not worth it unless you have tons of time on your hands.
http://ProofCollection.Net
Silver is hoarded as a PM which is why it trades as 90. Who hoards hundreds of pounds of copper as a PM?
You also have the issue of a market. If no one was buying 90% as silver, it would all get refined to 0.999 and the price of 90 would drop to below melt. Why would anyone want to pay a premium for cents when they can't recover the premium? You're basically paying for a non-performing asset that requires you to store thousands of pounds of metal in the hope that you could someday recover that value.
but do dealers pay a premium??
The wheats can be sold for a few cents apiece. For the memorial bronze pennies dealers will pay only face value.` I would go through 2500 coin boxes of pennies, mainly looking for some of the pricey varieties that may have been overlooked by collectors. And I saved all of the bronze pennies I encountered thinking they might be worth 2 to 3 cents a piece someday. I accumulated about 15,000 pre 1982 cents but got tired of dealing with them and the space they took up so cashed them in for face value at the shop. $150 worth of collectible coins now does more for me than what I might get someday for 3 bags of 5000 coins, Lincoln cents 1959-1982 with a few wheat cents from the 1940's and '50's mixed in.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.-Albert Einstein
Silver, yes. Copper memorial, no. Wheat cents, yes.
Not really sure what you're asking. No one pays a premium for coins for which there is no market.
What if copper continues to rise to, say, $6-$7/lb and a cent is now worth 5+ cents in melt.
Would that change the economics enough?
No, I think you'd need to be around $50/ There are about 3 rolls of copper pennies in a pound.
http://ProofCollection.Net
No
But at $6 to $7 level the scrap value will be double the face value. You don't need $50 for it to pay to scrap
You can run your business how you want, but the problem with them is the handling and work involved in the storage and verification. Can you buy rolls of these without inspecting each cent and how long would that take and how much is your or your employee's time worth? How and where do you store these and package them efficiently? Unlike the other metals, if you buy a bunch of pennies you could get stuck with them, no one will wholesale them until you get to at least a $50 price point especially with all of the weight and shipping cost which would just be onerous.
http://ProofCollection.Net
If you have 10 million pieces and are willing to deliver in Canada...
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Visit the Society of US Pattern Collectors at USPatterns.com.
there are machines for sorting them by weight
export isn't allowed either
They would sell like 90% in already sorted bags. [Doesn't pay to CRH for silver either but 90% bags are already sorted.]
People sell scrap metal all the time at the scrap value. People scrap silver plated tableware right now without the need for the gigantic premiums you suggest at the CURRENT price point.
They would probably trade now if they could be scrapped legally at the roughly $1.50 per 100 cents they would get at current prices. The problem is not the 50% profit margin, it's that you can't realize that margin.
Like I said before.
Traded 24/7, 365...
Yes, there is a market. And one needs to 'nickel & dime' their way to an eventual profit lol...
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=+Lincoln+95%+Copper+Penny+Cents+1959-1982+Bulk+&_sacat=0&_from=R40&rt=nc&LH_Sold=1&LH_Complete=1
>
Silver coins (90% and 40%) often traded below melt for decades after the 1979-80 spike. Probably the vast majority of U.S. silver coins have long since been melted.
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1982 cents are not worth saving. Many if not most 1982 cents have very little copper in them. 1981 and older cents would have the 95 Percent copper composition.
Have not heard of any dealers paying a premium.
Though as Rc5280 noted above, they have been trading retail at a premium for years at least on Ebay.
I recomend the 20+ ton truckload at $110k (approx 6 million coins) at only $5000 shipping. It will keep you busy posting each one here on the message boards asking questions for decades.
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"To Be Esteemed Be Useful" - 1792 Birch Cent --- "I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain." - Lily Tomlin
As do some 1982 cents. You can separate them by weight not by reading the dates.
Copper.
3.1 grams copper, 2.5 grams zinc. They have sorting machines that will sort them by weight. Problemo solved. THKS!