Interesting facts about Pennies, the US CURRENCY

So i got thinking last night......
Pennies- everyone has piles of them and no one likes to carry them around.
They also cost the US more to produce than their face value.
Sure they can be rolled and taken to bank, or spent as a roll, or taken to a coin sorter in town and they take 7-9% of your gross as profit for counting, then you take a ticket to the register and they pay out your total in cash bills.
In general, they are a pain in the butt to deal with but we all have a stash of them.

Also- we all like copper. Pennies are made of copper right? Hmmmm I wonder how many pennies it takes to make a pound. Got wondering if their scrap value was more than the currency value. I'm not suggesting we all go jump on scrapping pennies, thats illegal.... BUT just the thought of such a possibility bothered me. So I typed in pennies on Wikipedia and found that it only takes $1.81 worth of pennies to make a pound. If they were indeed good copper that means their scrap value is at least or close to double the currency value. Very interesting!!!!!! But come to find out, they aren't such a high percentage of copper after all. Older pennies do contain 95% copper but newer ones are 99% Zinc.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_p...eigh_one_pound



Just something I found interesting. Obviously if there was a way to melt them down into bars and pass them off as real copper that could be a profitable business but I guess it doesn't work that way LOL

Again I was NOT suggesting we scrap currency! Just had to research my theory......

Discuss:

Well, I'd like to "scrap" the penny. But not in that way, I s'pose.

Ain't it a shame that money is worth less than scrap now? that just sucks!

yeah you need the earlier pennies for the scrap.

People do scrap them?

I know, but I got the implication that it was done... I guess you meant in theory, for scrap value you would have to use pre-82 coins. I don't plan on doing this by any means, I was just pointing out something I found interesting...

Yeah it is illegal but i bet someone out there is doing it.

I would hope and assume that if someone were to attempt to sell them as scrap they would melt them down first?

When we were kids people would lay pennies on train tracks and pick them up later as flattened copper pieces, out of sheer novelty nothing else.... ? Not sure what was soo cool about it LOL

Originally Posted by Scrap man

No. It's illegal to destroy national currency

I got to wondering how the penny press machines get around it...found this.

"IT'S LEGAL!
U.S. Title 18, Chapter 17, Section 331: Prohibits among other things, fraudulent alteration and mutilation of coins. This statue does not, however, prohibit the mutilation of coins if done without fraudulent intent if the mutilated coins are not used fraudulently."

http://www.rockyrockholt.com/

Suppose melting them down constitutes fraud?

No worries here, nothing hot enough to melt them.

Right now, Canada has a program called the "Alloy Recovery Program" in which all banks are required by law to pull all old nickels and pennies out of circulation so they can scrap them.

In canada, all pre-1982 Nickels are made of 100% nickel. Their nickel value is about $.12 (USD) each.

Originally Posted by Mick

I don't think the yards would take the chance of buying copper coins as scrap.

Sure they would if you melted them down how would they know what they where?

http://www.coinflation.com/ This tell what they are worth melted.But as of Dec 2006 it is illegal to melt down pennies and nickels.

so if you took a load of pre-1982 us pennies to canada for scrap would they buy them?

I have been wondering he same thing. Up here our pre-82 pennies are 98% copper. Wonder what would happen if a pile of them ended up in another country, would it be legal to melt them down...I'm sure if they ended up in China or India they would be thrown straight into the furnace....or maybe used to pay for months of wages.