With the end of Lincoln Cents, should I bother saving them for the melt or collectability?
MaineJim
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Just thinking about the end of the cents coming right up. Do you think they will allow legal melting? I'm assuming the government will contract it out for them all to be sorted and melted down so perhaps they won't want anyone else to do it?
What about the average Joe now not able to fill their Whitman Cent Folders from rolls from the bank? Will the value of rolls of cents increase? How about you copper hoarders out there, are you ramping up your efforts hoping to cash in?
Jim
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For collector value, absolutely not. This experiment had been done in the Eurozone and Canada. It's all still bulk garbage.
For melting, it is barely profitable now and not at all profitable for small amounts. Also, don't forget to include opportunity cost on the money that is not earning interest or returns. If you hold $1000 in cents for 10 years and sell them for $2000, you've lost money.
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A dealer told me he can still get canadian cents by the truck load see above post as well. I see no collectability....
Our kids will all be dead by the time common modern zincolns have a chance to have a premium. My kids are still in school…but I’m not even sure their grandkids will see it.
As far as copper value goes, I live in a copper mining town and it would be amazing for us if the price of copper rose to the point of making Pennie’s worth hoarding.
I wonder what the price point would be. I think copper is currently around $4 a pound and it takes about 150 copper cents to make a pound. What if the price doubled?
Jim
The credit union told me Friday that they can no longer order boxes of cents for me.
They are bronze not copper. You need to look at the price of bronze which is under $3.
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Interesting, I'll have to check with my bank. I was planning to stop hunting cents and move to nickels for a while. I find looking through them very relaxing for some odd reason. Probably takes me back to my childhood almost 65 years ago.
Read this thread and it might give you some idea of how not worth your time it is to horde cents. Personally I very much doubt that melting pre 83 cents will ever be legal. If by some chance it does it will be decades from now and the costs to do so will have likely doubled too.
https://boards.ngccoin.com/topic/439039-a-copper-penny-problem/
My Collection of Old Holders
Never a slave to one plastic brand will I ever be.
It’s illegal to melt cents and nickels.
Technically 82 & prior are gilding metal with 95% copper. Bronze is usually < 90% copper and includes tin and/or other metals. So ~165 pennies would make a lb of pure copper which is trading close to $5. But as noted, you cannot melt yet.
Except that's not the way bronze is purchased because of refining costs. There may be $5 worth of copper, by no one is going to pay you $5 for them.
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Spend them.
Pennies will largely be used for chill scrap rather than alloy, I believe. In either case they're worth nearly their weight in copper or more.
It's probably not worth your time unless you have access to a lot of them at or near face value right now. Anyone who already has this is going to demand a large premium to face value especially since it was announced they would be discontinued. By the time you can acquire them in smaller quantities they will be gone.
If the economy is going as strong as expectations in 2 years they could be trading at seven or eight cents each. Of course, a recession would change this picture and, perhaps, dramatically.
It's not a good financial move for most individuals because of lack of scale.
No
OK, now you're just making stuff up.
I Googled "chill scrap" and nothing comes up for that term. 🧐
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Try "chill scrap foundry" without the quotes. In many processes it is desired to bring down the temperature of a heat because they are always brought to overtemp in order to achieve complete mixing at heat temperature. This is usually rectified by adding cold alloy. It is used more in some aspects of alloy production than other. My experience here is somewhat limited but I've seen plenty of coin melted for alloy or to adjust temperatures.
Maybe we should use “chill CRAP” to cool down some of these threads when they get too hot…lol
Everyone needs to chill.
Scrap
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Oh scrap.
credit unions are banking-lite
try a bank-bank
i would save your cents in 2026 when they are "no longer in need by the treasury"
you can use them to avoid rounding
Commercial bank quit ordering them for me this summer. Thanks for the info.
I think I'll just set aside a few sealed boxes of cents from the bank before they stop allow ordering them. Not too many and they don't take up much space in the closet.
Jim
So my stepson, who graduated summa cum laud from a prestigious university, with three degrees in finance, thinks in a few more years that ALL coins will be collector’s items when all financial transactions transfer to credit cards and crypto currencies. Cash registers and currency as we know it will no longer be needed…and we will have the relics of a bygone era with our collections. When I show him my collection that he and his sister will inherit one day, he gets excited knowing that he will have a part of history that many will have never seen nor ever will. That is HIS take on all this, so take it for what it is worth….😉
Cashless society, heard bout that years ago
I can't do that, all of mine are round.
There are too many barriers to make this a reality any time soon. Just one of those is how do you get the homeless to use a card when they have no bank account. There is no way that homelessness will be solved in a few years I get why a young person thinks this way. Most have little real world experience and think that because they and most young people they know only use a card vs cash that everyone else is like them. I imagine in ten years after he has had time to see the real world his outlook and timeframe might change.
My Collection of Old Holders
Never a slave to one plastic brand will I ever be.
Perhaps he might consider that current digital currency doesn't really have a negative impact on many collector coins. I too have a number of financial degrees that I actually used for decades, but that does not seem to impact many collector coins.
Julius Caesar, as Consul for the Third Time. Early 46 BC. AV Aureus (20mm, 7.94 g, 7h). Rome mint; A. Hirtius, praetor. Veiled head of female (Vesta or Pietas?) right; C•CAESAR-COS•TER • Ter around / Emblems of the augurate and pontificate: lituus, capis, and securis; A • hirTiuÍ • pr around from lower left. Crawford 466/1; Molinari 217 (D23/R223); CRI 56; Sydenham 1018; Bahrfeldt 19; Calicó 37; Biaggi –; RBW 1634. Light rose tone, minor roughness, reverse lt. graffito, very well-centered strike on a radiant, silky flan. This series of aurei, and this coin in particular, is believed to portray a pious portrait of Julius Caesar. XF Strike 5/5 Surface 3/5.
Not quite sure where I said he thought it would have a negative impact…..but he did say he thought all the coins and currency being used now would become collectors items as they vanish from circulation due to crypto, credit cards, etc..
There is something to be said about getting worthless coins while they are worthless.
China's bronze coins are a good example. They made so many they were worthless. BUT I'd kill for a money string with 100 or so of those all nicely bound.
Seriously I would love to find that.
The Zimbabwe $100,000,000,000,000 note is worth far more today as a collector's item then it was as currency for example.
Llamas and alpacas are camels. They aren't like camels, or related. They are camels. When was anyone going to tell me this?! How long had Bill Nye been holding out on us?
I decided to test buying cents at the local banks today, went to four banks and asked for a box of cents. No luck, they all said they don't order cents anymore.I then ask for some rolls, they would all sell me $10 worth.. All the rolls were mixed date coins, no 2025.
Jim
I opened up 20 rolls so far today and had a few interesting finds. The first was a big surprise, a 1906 Indian Head cent was in the 2nd roll. That was unexpected. Nothing special condition wise so worth a buck or two at most. There were two 2025-Ds and a 2025-P. I haven't seen a single 2025 coin in my area so that was interesting. There were a few 40's and 50's wheat cents. I expected more of those. There was one 2009 cent. And finally the ratio of copper cents was about 25% per roll. The date spread was pretty good so if a kid was trying to fill out a Lincoln folder they would have had good luck in this batch. Oh yea, there was also a dime in one of the rolls. So all in all, good entertainment. I'll stick the 2025s in my Lincoln set that had the empty slots and the 1906 in a flip and dump the rest in the bank sorter and consider it a success.
Jim