The Copper Cent Thread

[Pyramid]

Discussions on Copper Cents go here. Hand-sorters, hoarders, and collectors etc all welcome to discuss Cu cents.

Didn't see this thread yet, so I thought I'd kick start it and do my part to ease the transition somewhat and make some contributions to the new GIM2, the mods are doing a ton of work! Enjoy.

[RossL]

here's one

[RossL]

here's the other side

[RossL]

here's the slab

[gilmoujr]

Absolutely beautiful.

[AGRO]

Cool we needed this thread.

Love those wheat pennies.

[RossL]

here's one that I used to own, but I sold it.

I really regret selling this one, but I needed the cash at the time,

[RossL]

it's a large cent, much bigger than the cents made starting 1856

here's the slab:

[latemetal]

Even pennies tell the inflation story, first large, then smaller, and then zinc. Thanks for the thread.

[highroller4321]

Total Face Value: $100
Coin Type: 1909-1982 Lincoln Copper Cent
Copper Price: $3.5301 / pound

Zinc Price: $1.0604 / pound


Total melt value is $233.57.



That should be the key point to this topic.

[SimpleMan]

Welcome Highroller,
Glad to see you make the transition.
I have not seen Andy or Ruprick. Hope they will be along shortly!
It still amazes me that I can "buy" a metal every day for less than half of it's true value.
1965 all over!
I was not around then but this must have been what those in the know felt like.
Are you just concentrating on the cents or do you also hoard the nickels?

[highroller4321]

Welcome Highroller,
Glad to see you make the transition.
I have not seen Andy or Ruprick. Hope they will be along shortly!
It still amazes me that I can "buy" a metal every day for less than half of it's true value.
1965 all over!
I was not around then but this must have been what those in the know felt like.
Are you just concentrating on the cents or do you also hoard the nickels?

You must not know that I run a company called The Portland Mint that sells copper cents as a form of investment. I also sell nickels, but push cents much harder.

[Pyramid]

Forgive me for bumping this thread, but there's not nearly enough discussion on copper cents. Please contribute.

I hand-sorted a really nice box tonight: 59 Wheats and 36.8% copper overall.

What is an "official hoard"? I'm at 1/2 ton now with a goal of 1 ton. I will keep going, but will slow down after 1 ton because storage space is becoming an issue.
Thanx

[Penny-wise]

.........

[newmisty]

I found this a while back hand sorting a bank box.

I found a 2009 penny in the same roll making the spread 111 years between pennies found in the same bank roll! I thought that was pretty neat.

Been hand-sorting when the mood strikes for about a year and a half. I got by buddy into it and he's up to $900 face in Cu and counting. It's good for him and keeps him out of trouble. In fact, I can definitively say that hand sorting pennies can be very therapeutic to those with PTSD and anger issues, including and not limited to alcoholism and addiction. Who'd a thunk?

[Treasure Searcher]

I missed out on a penny hoard! An elderly customer of mine had run a bar for about 40 years. He and his wife did not take the pennies to the bank. They filled up a bucket and when that was full, carried it over to their house and placed it in the basement. They did this for decades.

The couple sold the bar, the wife died and then the guy died. Anyhow, when he was alive, I talked with him about many things, particularly coins. He told me of his penny hoard. He joked to me that he would sell it to me. When I got the cash and a large scale lined up, he changed his mind.

Since he died, I contacted his daughter and the pennies are already gone. It makes me wonder how many wheat pennies were in that hoard! Sure hope she did not take them to the bank in the large city she lives in. Probably alot of wheat pennies went back into circulation!

[newmisty]

Aw man!!!! Who knows what all would be found in that stash!

Cool story.

[Mined Games 2]

I found my first Indian Head the other day. It was a long time coming, but man was I psyched to see that Indian's profile! I estimate that I must have sorted about 8 grand in pennies before it came my way. I guess there's something to be said for perseverance!

Happy hunting everyone!

[Pyramid]

I found my 6th "Indian Head" cent last night while hand-sorting, which broke a long, 5-6 month drought. A G4 1907, always good to find these.

Also scored a nice 1943 steel wheatie from a teller a couple weeks ago who was saving it for a "collector." Guess I was in the right place at the right time, or was overly polite and dapper that day.

[newmisty]

Wow 6 is a lot. I have found 2 so far.

Yesterday I got a 2010 Shield penny from a "Give a penny take a penny" cup, then later I got 3 cents change with two being 2010 pennies and one 09 presidency.

[wiper]

I don't even bother with the '09/'10's while handsorting anymore. there are so many around here, I have multiple rolls of all of them and that's plenty. Last night probably 20% of the zincs I tossed in the bucket were 09/10's..

[wiper]

was always afraid of taking the $50 bags from the machine at my credit union, only took the first one because i felt like it was easy/more agreeable for the bank than giving up their boxes..

no more.

got one last friday i only got around to sorting yesterday/today...

i got 50% or so copper. also, from the 5,000 pennies, 103 wheaties. that's right...ONE HUNDRED AND THREE WHEAT PENNIES FROM $50!!!

someone pumped a crap-load of their old pennies into the machine a few hours before i got there!

[newmisty]

Was hand sorting a box and found this. One of the more rare pennies Ive dug up and it put a smile on my face.

The only thing I know is that it is a Zincoln (post 1982) and is an unstamped planchet.

PS: I also found over 20 of the 2010 pennies in the same box

[Pyramid]

was always afraid of taking the $50 bags from the machine at my credit union, only took the first one because i felt like it was easy/more agreeable for the bank than giving up their boxes..

no more.

got one last friday i only got around to sorting yesterday/today...

i got 50% or so copper. also, from the 5,000 pennies, 103 wheaties. that's right...ONE HUNDRED AND THREE WHEAT PENNIES FROM $50!!!

someone pumped a crap-load of their old pennies into the machine a few hours before i got there!

That is an excellent bag Wiper! Just think of bags in pre-boxed form. The big boys with the Ryedales love them as they can just pour and not mess with the wrappers. I prefer boxes myself, they have less hair and junk in them and are a bit faster once you find a good method to open the rolls (lowly hand-sorter here). Either way, copper is copper, doesn't really matter on the packaging.

[wiper]

doing some hand-sorting last night, and found a Mercury Dime...i was pumped!

i mean, you find regular dimes all the time, but a Merc?? i actually quit for 10 minutes and celebrated, then tossed the little guy in with a bag of all his cousins. haha.

how does someone not realize that this particular dime doesn't look like the others? i've NEVER seen a merc in any dime rolls or change, let alone in a roll of pennies!

[Aurumag]

For about two years, I ran a retail store, and I encouraged customers to pay in pennies.
I hand sorted about 200K pennies during that time and ended up with quite a few Cu pennies, but only two Indian Heads.

I became addicted to penny sorting and started obtaining $25 boxes from the bank. I began weighing the boxes and sorted the heavier ones first.
I discovered that a penny box weighing 14.72 pounds will yield on average 25% copper pennies. Anything significantly lighter would be returned to the bank unsorted, and of course, anything significantly heavier would be a score!

[Mined Games 2]

Found a 1909 VDB while sorting the other day. It's in surprisingly good shape. I also scored my second Indian Head a few weeks back. I'm really getting hooked on this hobby. Rare finds are what provides the incentive to keep searching. Good luck to all my fellow copperheads in their searches!

[Weatherman]

Here is another reason to look closely at pennies!

Copper Penny From ’43 Fetches a Mint

A penny minted from the wrong metal in World War II has been sold for $1.7 million, said Laura Sperber of Legend Numismatics in Lincroft, who arranged the sale. Virtually all United States cents minted in 1943 were struck in steel rather than copper alloy, and are worth only a few cents each today, but a few coins were mistakenly made from bronze blanks left over in mint machinery. The coin was unknown to the collectors until 1979. Proceeds will go to charity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/us..._BRF.html?_r=1

[curmudgeonista]

For about two years, I ran a retail store, and I encouraged customers to pay in pennies.
I hand sorted about 200K pennies during that time and ended up with quite a few Cu pennies, but only two Indian Heads.

I became addicted to penny sorting and started obtaining $25 boxes from the bank. I began weighing the boxes and sorted the heavier ones first.
I discovered that a penny box weighing 14.72 pounds will yield on average 25% copper pennies. Anything significantly lighter would be returned to the bank unsorted, and of course, anything significantly heavier would be a score!

What a great tip! I love the idea that you can identify fertile fields before diving in!

I know I'm late to the table here, and rehashing an old thread, but it just recently finally sank in for me that weight is the key to this too...though on a smaller scale

I haven't pursued sorting much before, but it's time to roll up all that pocket change that has accumulated in various jars, boxes and drawers over the last many years. After reading so much here about copper cent values (and nickels) I was determined not to give that stuff away, but my eyesight isn't what it used to be and I did not relish dating the few thousand pennies I'm guessing I've got.

Started out slow sorting by date. The weight issue didn't connect until I had to look up again how to tell the difference between copper and zinc 82's. It was then that the significance of the using the weight difference to sort hit me.

This is probably not a revelation for you experienced sorters, but it was for me. I got my little pocket scale out and started throwing all pennies on it instead of looking at the dates. MUCH faster and easier. In fact, I usually grab four at a time... 4 zincs registering about 10g and whisked away. If it comes up 10.5g or over I know there's copper in there and I can check them individually to find the winner(s). I also try to grab shiny ones together finding they are mostly zincs and I can run through them in a big hurry. My hit rate for copper on brown ones is well over 50%, though I could just be hitting an older "vein" running through about 10-years worth of accumulation.

Overall I can pull a roll of coppers in about 1/10th the time this way. Only drawback is perhaps missing wheatbacks, though I have spotted a few and pulled them aside.

[Mined Games 2]

If your eyes are having a tough time looking at the dates, try employing another one of your senses. I sort by ear. I bounce them off a granite tile and I can tell instantly if it's copper or not by the sound. The zincs have a dull sound when they bounce, but coppers make a distinct ringing sound. Must be why the use copper when making bells! It's not an infallible method, but I don't think I'm letting too many coppers sift through. I find this is the fastest method for identifying the zincs to discard, and then I check the 'keepers' for dates to double check accuracy, and to look for rare dates.

As for being late to the game, don't worry about it. You're still way early as far as the general public is concerned. As inflation drives metal prices higher, there's nothing like accumulating a highly coveted industrial metal at a fixed rate! No matter how high the price of CU goes, we penny sorters continue to be 'locked in' at a price of $1.50/lb. Best investment out there, IMO.

[gilmoujr]

I went through $28 face of pennies two nights ago. It was my grand-mother-in-law's that she stored for a few years. I averaged 61%. Not too bad. I have about $20 more fv to go through this weekend.

[TylerDurden]

That is an excellent bag Wiper! Just think of bags in pre-boxed form. The big boys with the Ryedales love them as they can just pour and not mess with the wrappers. I prefer boxes myself, they have less hair and junk in them and are a bit faster once you find a good method to open the rolls (lowly hand-sorter here). Either way, copper is copper, doesn't really matter on the packaging.

What the heck's the deal with that? I've been sorting for a couple years now and just recently started noticing hairs in several of the rolls. It's gross since they always seem to be the really thick and wiry black ones that make you wonder just what part of the persons body they came from.

[newmisty]

Went through two boxes today while trying to get another set of the ATB silver coins. I didn't get through to place an order but while searching I found a 1908 Indian Head cent! It made my day better since my call didn't go through. That makes 3 Indian heads I have found in circulation now. In addition to the IH I found a bit less than a quart in Cu and 10 wheaties. Thats a lot more wheaties than I normally find in this area.