Copper Pennies

So this has been brought up tons of times but I just wanted to kind of get a current idea of what people are doing. I myself have started buying bank boxes of 2500 pennies and will be sorting them with a machine I bought on amazon that sorts the 95% copper from the zinc ones. Those copper ones are worth a little over 2 cents at the moment but the issue is as many know it is illegal to tamper with currency to profit from it, so at its current state you cannot melt them down or sell them to be melted down. So many people including me think that they will stop making the penny (like canada did) and it will be legal to melt down and pull the copper. Issue is in canada the government stopped producing copper pennies and is now buying them up from all banks to melt down and use to make other coins and profit from the copper themselves rather than making it legal to melt, so people fear this could be the case in the us. So the big thing is time, if you wait long enough canada will have gone through all the pennies they can find and say it is no longer a currency and grant people the right to melt them down for the copper value. So here in the us pre 1942 pennies are 95% copper 5% zinc content and in the future I think and many others do they will stop producing, and eventually make it legal to be melted down, and when that happens I will sell to a smelter or a scrapyard (which will most likely buy by than) and make double my money, if not more since copper prices could rise a lot in the future.

The thing I like about this as an investment is there is little risk because a penny is always worth 1 penny so you can sell out at any time.

One of the issues with this is the weight of pennies and the time to sort.

A sorting machine is a good start



As for weight you really need a good place to store them because people who say "copper penny retirement" are kind of crazy and heres why.

Pre 1942 pennies weigh 146 pennies/lb

284,000 pennies will than equal a ton (2,000lbs)

A ton of copper pennies should be worth atleast $7,500

So if you consider the big picture (Using copper pennies as savings for retirement) you will be living in a dirt bunker filled with pennies for the rest of your life....


$500,000 worth of copper pennies = 133,333 lbs

66 tons

A ford 5150 weighs 4,950lbs approx.

So the pennies you would need to get $500,000 to even start retiring would be equal in weight to almost 27 ford f150's........


Just some stuff to think about. Ill post pics of my copper penny hoard and sorter soon