Making a profit by melting copper cents?
ddink
Posts: 2,748
How soon do you think we'll see copper Lincoln cents melted down for a profit, like silver coinage was in the 60s?
I heard they were making a French version of Medal of Honor. I wonder how many hotkeys it'll have for "surrender."
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In the bag were some copper cents, circa 1981-1982. It was in 1982 that the copper in pennies came close to approaching 1 cent in value. Apparently he heard something on the news and started putting them away.
Seems to me that it would have had to significantly exceed 1 cent in order to make melting them at all profitable. Who's gonna melt pennies worth 1.1 or 1.2 cents each - you'd have to have millions of 'em to make any money on the deal. There is no comparison to silver - a silver quarter might be worth a buck and it doesn't take too many of 'em to add up quickly. It would take a LOT of pennies to make 75c worth of profit.
How many pennies in a lb ? about 75 maybe, i'm not sure. If that's true then you can turn in 75 pennies and get $1.11 for them.
Considering the alloys of the post '82 cents i would think they would discount scrap value.
Not quite there yet to be profitable to think about "melt" value of pennies.
US cents are not referred to as "pennies". A penny is a British denomination.
US Lincoln cents were minted of bronze before 1982. Melting them down would also entail the process of purifying the copper. I doubt that this would ever be cost-effective.
US large cents were minted of pure copper.
We ARE watching you.
<< <i>US cents are not referred to as "pennies". A penny is a British denomination. >>
Actually, they are almost universally referred to as pennies, though that is not the proper numismatic term for them. Most numismatists also refer to Winged Liberty Dimes as "Mercury Dimes" despite the fact that they know better
Good point about the bronze alloy though. The refining process would be quite expensive.
<< <i>US cents are not referred to as "pennies". A penny is a British denomination. >>
geez louise !!! I provide a small tid bit of info to this thread and i get hammered on silly semantics !
WOWZER!!!!!! newsflash......................
hey John, since we're in a "correcting mode" i'll say that sure, they're referred to as PENNIES all the time. might not be Numismatically correct, but there's no reason to get the old sphincter muscle all tightened up about it!!!!
............back to the thread topic, it would seem that the time to start considering about melting "pennies" is when our Uncle decides to stop making them. copper has a fairly high melting point and it wpould take quite a bit to turn a profit. on the other hand, most dealers will pay a premium for wheat cents........oops, i mean wheat pennies!!
al h.
<< <i>US cents are not referred to as "pennies". A penny is a British denomination. >>
Note that the US Mint themselves refers to the one cent denomination coin as a "penny" repeatedly throughout their site, for example:
Link
Since the Mint is clearly an authority on this matter, pennies it is!
Yes there is the cost of seperation but metals, including copper, have been rising rapidly lately. Back in 174 the figure the bounced around was that once copper went over $1.54 per pound you were above the breakeven point. That figure my be getting close to being within reach, but I don't expect actual melting down of cents to start occuring until it gets over about $1.75.
limited melting even before copper gets to the break even point. It will be more convenient
for a few people to melt their pennies than return them to the bank. Copper is at only $1.25
now and there is no certainty that it will go higher.
I hate it when you see my post before I can edit the spelling.
Always looking for nice type coins
my local dealer
the trick now would be to find the old pre-82 copper cents. take a look at your pocket change-- I rarely see a pre-82 cent anymore.
cheers, alan
www.AlanBestBuys.com
www.VegasBestBuys.com
<< <i>176 cents to the pound is too high, 146 would be closer to the correct figure (453.5 grams/pd times 1 cent/3.11 grams = 145.8 cent/pd) >>
I put 88 pennies (oh.... excuse me, Lincoln Cents) on our Certified Digital parts weighing scale, and it came to .503
X 2 equals 1.0006 . Pretty close to 1 lb . give or take a pennie either way and your still way over your 146 pc figure.
A question that comes to mind is: "does a post '82 cent weight more or less than a pre '82 cent "?
I'll see if i can find a sample of each and post what i come up with.
<< <i>A question that comes to mind is: "does a post '82 cent weight more or less than a pre '82 cent "?
I'll see if i can find a sample of each and post what i come up with. >>
Pre-1982 cents weight 3.11 grams; post-1982 Zincolns weight 2.50 grams. In 1982 they made both kinds, so you have to weigh them to tell the difference.
I know perfectly well they're commonly referred to as "pennies" by almost everyone.
We ARE watching you.
I remember stores paying $1.08 for 100 pennies when I was a kid.
1959 .00611
1964 .00611
1971-D .00611
1982-D .00568
2000-D .00568
with those weights it would take between 163.66 and 176.056 of those little round copper/zinc thingys to make a pound
if you were to cast something neat out of the melt.
i wanna make me some cool custom-fit brass knuckles
out of some just for grins.
maybe a nice figurine or sculpture would be cool.
....door knockers?.....
be a cool hobby to get into... casting things from various alloys.
for a pre 1982 cent to be worth more than one cent the price of copper must exceed $1.44 a pound because there are 144 cents to a pound.
cheers, alan mendelson
www.AlanBestBuys.com
www.VegasBestBuys.com