Wow penny/copper scam

My life outside scraping involves some retail "work"....Well over the year I have picked up on a scam which is pretty sneaky, but seems tedious to me. We buy bulk change from the bank. I assume someone is buying rolls of pennies from the bank, and using a machine to sort the pre-1982 ones that contain copper. Then what they are doing is removing a very large percentage of the copper from the pennies with what looks like acid, or some sort of electrolysis? This makes the penny sound totally different, and seems to show the metal blend is not homogenous in the construction of a penny. Some of them are barely 1/3 of what they should be, others are 3/4 of what they should be. I call these penny rolls the Chicklets. They return 50 chicklets back to the roll and bring it back to the bank as rolls of pennies. I believe they are smart enough to remove different percentages of the penny and have different "grades". I told the bank and they didn't seem to care and said we are the first complaint, if we want we can return any rolls we get like that. I left some of the said pennies at work, but I will take a picture of a few and post it tomorrow.

Doesn't that fall under the whole thing where you're not supposed to destroy currency?

Seems like an awful lot of work for not much return.

Its happening here too. Sorta smart yet dumb at the same time. Pre 1982 pennies are almost all copper and takes about $1.80to make a lb. So with current prices they are doubling their money. Now the dumb thing is it takes time to sort the older pennies out. To melt them it takes fuel which cost money. And the really dumb thing is that if you get caught the secret service will be on your rear since its a first degree felony. I think ill pass on this moneymaker. Lol.

http://www.realcent.org/

Some reading material. Check out ebay as well. There is a market for pre '82's.

http://www.goldismoney2.com/showthre...Processing-LLC

Some back history on the early days for hardcore pre '82 processing before the gov. shut the whole thing down. This is a great read.

Originally Posted by Victor

http://www.goldismoney2.com/showthre...Processing-LLC

Some back history on the early days for hardcore pre '82 processing before the gov. shut the whole thing down. This is a great read.

Great minds think alike... I visit both that site and Realcent quite a bit. Bit more of a lurker on realcent though.

For the others, you can't destroy coins unless it's for educational purposes.

Threw most of the small chicklet ones away but here is a good idea of it with less material missing.

looks like zincs to me. They don't hold up well

I'm not sure someone is Metal detecting to the point where we have gotten hundreds of these pennies? If we have received that many from the bank I can't imagine how many are out there.

Those are the newer zinc pennies. They're suffering from what is known as "zinc rot". It's worthwhile to hold onto the new pennies that look perfect - it won't be long and they'll be worth quite a bit because there will be so few left in mint condition. I put back a few rolls every year now.

Pure copper tarnishes quite easily, and that's what's covering pennies these days. They used to be made of bronze or brass (depending on year - even steel in one year). Now they're zinc plated in copper. Once the copper starts to oxidize and let's air hit the zinc, the zinc starts to crumble when it oxidizes.

I've mentioned it before, but I go through 4 boxes a week pulling out coppers and wheat pennies. I've seen the zinc ones with holes where the white zinc powder just tumbles out.