How do you store your copper pennies
 

I like the advantages of storing them in boxes for neatness along with the ability to know an exact dollar amount.
However, recently, I've been sorting through more and the process has become tedious and I've accumulated a huge backlog.

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

i keep mine in this jar that keeps count on top

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...=263602_263622

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

In glass jars. I am not big enough to have 5 gal buckets!

Also the bars in plastic bags. As well as the wheaties.

The plastic keeps the bars from tarnishing.

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Safe deposit box at the bank. :bandito:

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I picked up a dozen large canvas coin bags that are marked $50 in cents with various years/mints mostly from the 70s. These bags were meant to carry copper coins!

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i voted 5 gal bucket but so far we just have a couple coffee cans full

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Three liter Deer Park water bottles... 30 lbs. a piece and stackable.

:coolbeer:

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I'm using Aeroplane brand mango chutney barrels that hold 6 gallons of condiment or roughly 320lbs of coppers(I can no longer lift it on the scale)

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Thats how i keep mine as well...just a plastic bag. Didnt know about the tarnish though.. Whats the reason?

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a 20 yard dumpster.

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In lots and lots of these :wink:

http://www.sushob.com/copper/images/...00-1005bag.jpg http://www.sushob.com/copper/images/...00-1003bag.jpg
http://www.sushob.com/copper/images/...00-1000bag.jpg http://www.sushob.com/copper/images/...00-1001bag.jpg

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

i have 3 1 gallon plastic buckets that had olives stored in them....thats about it for my copper penny collection unless i see some kinda change in the future....i move around to much to stockpile them

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

3 to 5 gal buckets from local donut shop. A typical bucket will be between 140 - 160 lbs...call it 150 lbs average depending on size.

I have built very strong pallets that are 40" square.

9 buckets per layer on pallet in a 3 bucket x 3 bucket foot-print.....9 buckets x 150 lbs = 1350 lbs per layer.

I stack 3 layers per pallet.....3 x 1350 = about 4000 lbs per pallet = roughly 2 tons per pallet.

The overall loaded pallet is roughly a 40" cube.....pretty compact for 2 tons of copper. I find this to be more compact than 55 gal oil drums which hold roughly 1 ton of pennies each - since to move a 1 ton drum it must be palletized.

MIM = Metal Is Money.......all metal is money....

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The "bulk" 1959-1982 coppers go in 1-gallon size zip lock bags, then back into the bank boxes they came in. Taped up tight, they stack quite nicely. However, my allocated storage shelf is almost full, so I'll probably be "graduating" to a small bucket like Master Ruprick pretty soon.

The AU 2009, Wheats, brown/reds, Indians, Canadians, King George etc have there own separate bags. Have some tubes on order, will be organizing the pre-1940 Wheats by decade when they arrive.

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

It's not even worth the rent.:thumpdown

Mine go in coffee cans.

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Ammo boxes.

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If silver is the poorman's gold, then copper is the homeless hobo's gold?


Seriously, to save a full two thousand pounds of copper cents, you'll need nearly 300,000 coins, and thats a lot of work to separate out that many. You probably need to go through more than a million coins. The cent values copper at about $1.46 per pound, and copper currently goes for $3.10 per pound. Because they are government property you cant just turn them in as scrap. Big deal, you'e only made $3280 for your work. For the time invested to sort out maybe a million coins to recover 300,000 coppers, you could have probably made five times that much flipping burgers at McDonalds, even after the government's confiscatory taxes. Plus how do you market them? Do you need to find hundreds of other idiot buyers and sell each one a few hundred? As I noted, you cant just sell them as scrap because they are government property. At least if you bought and stored scrap, you know where you could turn it in for payment.

Saving copper cents because they have a slight metal value more than the face value is a silly waste of time because of the work involved. You'd be better off by far to get a minimum wage second job and put all the money you made into physical silver. Pull your heads out and face the reality.
:headsand:

Chris

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

SO.....any coin minted by the US treasury/mint is Government property?? This must then include the GAE and SAE's Who knew?

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Who peed in Chris' Corn Flakes this morning?

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I use empty protein tubs.

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

yep, even paper money - thats why its illegal to deface money. Also, why do you think folks dont melt down 90% silver? Yes, its pretty unlikely the government would prosecute, but hey, if you were melting down 300,000 copper cents and they heard of it, its a possibility. Try taking them to a scrap dealer and see if he will buy them........

No, I'm in prefectly fine mood - just pointing out the reality of hoarding copper cents. Unless you think copper is shortly going to $30 or $40 a pound, it makes no sense. Now dont get me wrong - I think investing in copper related assets like mining companies or even futures might well make good sense. But collecting copper cents is just silly.

By the way, there is no such thing as a US copper penny! There never has been! No US pennies have ever been made. The penny is an English coin, and the use of the name penny for the coin that is actually known as a cent harkens back to the time when the US was still an English colony.

Chris

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

I like to think of Copper and Nickle as the redheaded and platinum blonde scalding hot trailer park cousins of the debutantes Silver and Gold. Lead would be their gray haired MILFy mom.

ALL METALS ARE MONEY!

I bet you would have said the exact same thing back in 1965....."90% Silver Coins.....heck, they are circulating everywhere......their metal content is only worth 30% more than face value....."

In 1960 the 90% silver coins were just a little bit over sound....$1 face = $1 in silver content...

In 1965 the 90% circulating coin still only had an intrinsic value of 30% more than face or 1.3X Face......today it is 13X Face...or a ten fold increase.

Copper Pennies have 2X Face value in intrinsic metal content.

There is a lot more potential profit motivation to hoard copper pennies today than there was silver in 1965.

If you had a time machine and could go back and easily hoard 90% silver out of circulation would you do it? YES!!!!!

Well, with my fleet of Rydale macinies, I have a "time machine"......I get 30% copper from circulating pennies. I can pick up about $1000 Face Value of pennies, sort them and even dump the zincs in about 5 hours total time - including storage and clean-up......$300 Face Value Copper for a cost of $300 and a metal value of $600......thats $300 / 5 hours = over $60/hr.....quite a bit better than a McJob.

A single Ryedale processing 300 coins/minute = 18,000/hr......assume 30% copper = $60/hr in copper FACE VALUE......they currently are 2X face in metal value.....and heading north everyday......what about when they are 13X face value like silver is today?!?!?!?!

Here is the better part.....the government will kill the penny in the near future as inflation keeps eating away at the dollar....who needs 1/100th dollar resolution these days? I predict that within 5 years you will see $10/lb copper....and inside 10 years....perhaps $25/lb copper.

I have 16,000 lbs hoarded away....I'll scrap them out for $150,000 - $400,000 in the future .....and retire my fixed rate 5% mortgage.

That will be a great story....pay off a beautiful home for $16,000 in pennies! I'll be able to tell that story...and you won't!

I got my hoard - do you?

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

90% Silver gets refined into .999 silver ever single day......90% silver coin will be very difficult to find in the future for this reason.

When the penny is dead....melt away...up until 3 years ago you could export all you wanted.

Chindia realized the lowest cost copper mine in the world was circulating copper pennies in the USA......so our govt had to pass an export ban.

I'm still mining....10 tons goal on copper, 1 ton on nickel, 3 tons on lead.

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

Ruprick:

No refiner will take US coin for refining - silver or copper. However, if you melt it down yourself, and give bars to the refiner, then he will take bars. You are going to need a quite a furnace, and it will take you a lot of work to melt down your tons of cents, even if you melt them down in 20 pound increments.
You can get 90% silver by the bag or bucket full at any coin shop in the land, and its been 45 years since the mint was making them for general circulation. 90% silver didnt dissapear when silver was $50 per ounce and it wont dissapear now.

Maybe, but copper is not closely tied to monetary factors like gold and silver, and very few people hoard it (you would be the exception). Copper is more tied to building construction, and the construction industry is likely to be fairly slow all over the world except in parts of Asia and India. Because of that, I dont think you will see the big acceleration in copper prices you might hope for.


I have a feeling there is more to it than this - most banks only keep $50 to $100 in cents on hand at any one time, and they dont want to just give all of their cent inventory away. Perhaps you have some special access to cents that most other folks dont. Just collecting $1000 in cents for most people would take a lot more than five hours as you'd need to hit up most of the banks in town, even if you live in a decent sized city.
So how much did the Rydale machines cost? Sounds like you have quite an investment in this process.

Hey have you ever sold scrap copper to a scrap dealer? I have and they dont pay you 100% of the metal value - more like about 65% or around two thirds. They have to handle the material and make a profit too. So your cents that have a $3 per pound metal value only have a scrap value of around $2, and you'll need to buy a big melting furnace and burn a lot of fuel to melt them all down. You'll also need a big truck to carry the tons of copper to the scrap dealer.
Additionally, Scrap dealers now require you to give them ID before they will pay you. Seems like the IRS has forced them to identify the folks they pay. Now I doubt the IRS will chase down some guy like me who brings in $50 worth of copper scrap. But if you bring in $200,000 worth, you can bet that Obama's men will be checking out your tax returns. Bottom line is that if you do make any money on your copper at the scrap dealer, you will pay full taxes on the profit or the IRS will come looking for you.

No question on that one, but some metals have more value density than others. I can stuff half a millon dollars of gold into a brief case and walk away quite easily with no government interference. Even 50 lbs of silver is worth over $13,000.
Copper has real value, but if you need to quickly move your copper, its going to take time and some big trucks.


No insult intended, but I am still unconvinced that hoarding copper cents is better than flipping burgers.

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

Wow - I thought refiners melted 90% all the time ti make .999 - I talked to a guy at SilverTown a year ago....and I'm nearly positive that is what he told me.....I could be incorrect or misinformed.

Agree $ density sucks for copper compared to other metals.....as a rought rule....Silver is to Gold as Copper is to Silver.....been a while since I did the calculations....but copper at $3/lb is about $0.20/ozt.....while silver is about $18/ozt...thus Copper:Silver is currently about 90:1....while silver:gold is 63:1.....in the ballpark close.

I run 3 Rydales.....when I bought them I had about $900 total into them....I did have 5 at one time...but sold 2...got about 75% of new residual value.....so it really is mostly money tied up - get a lot back at the sale.

I have a deal with several credit unions that have coin accepting machines in their lobby....they love to sell me bagged pennies once per week. I can make my loop for pick-up in about 90 minutes....$700 - $1000/wk. I also hit my dump banks where they accept bagged pennies from me at the same time - that adds some time.

Sorting is fast....3 machines will sort nearly $600/hr....so, 1 - 2 hr sorting.

What limits me is the $300 a week i must hoard away.....that's over $1000/mo - that i must save.

I doubt I'll ever scrap the copper.....I have some leads on end users that will utilize the copper pennies in their current form. I picture a big truck hauling them away and a check showing up in my hand.

Chindia will need copper - even if we never build another thing in USA or EU.....there is a lot of electricity needed by 3 billion Chindians. We will see copper prices that will make you crap your pants as the dollar continues to sink.....and it takes a lot of energy to mine base metals....energy is not getting any cheaper.

Come on over to the dark side....brother!

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

I didn't vote in the poll because I don't have enough copper pennies to store them like that.

I've got only a bunch of rolls and a few large coffee cans where I throw them when I find them.

I have to ask the kids to read the dates, as they're usually to hard for me to read.
I keep anything prior to 1984.

Still , I figure its a significant % of my physical metal holdings and important to my overall future plans.

I'm quite worried about mobility in the future so I haven't moved more into copper.
The scenario that I have them for is if in the future I want to build my own house or something and might need the copper.
If copper becomes really expensive I would be ok still as I would have been hedged into it at lower prices with the current hoarding.
I think they would have to revalue the penny or retire it before that day comes, so either way I would be covered.

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

I like 5 lb protein powder containers...

Don't really care how many copper pennies I have, just so long I have more than the average joe...

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

Ruprick - best of luck to you - you have access to large amounts of cents that few others do.

I'll stick with silver and gold, they have been very good to me.

As to destruction of US coins, I lifted the following quote. After reading this, I would not melt down coins if I were a refiner.

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

Its late, so I wont get much into this thread, but 90% silver is legal to melt. Only the newer coinage (post '65) is under the new ban. I dont have a current source to quote, but refineries such as midwest takes them.


http://www.midwestrefineries.com/silver.htm

http://www.midwestrefineries.com/ima...nstruck640.jpg

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

Are you sure they melt it or that they just buy and broker it as stated in the quote?
I am sure many refiners would happily buy 90% silver and sell it to others at an appropriate profit.

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

There are two issues here, the first being the general melting of coins, and the second applying specifically to cents and nickels.

The key word in your legal quote is "fraudulently." If you alter a penny to try to pass it off as a dime, you're in trouble. If you send a penny through one of those penny squisher machines and save it as a souvenir, or even sell it as a squashed penny, you are doing nothing wrong.

I have no affiliation with this place, but they summed it up nicely: http://www.pressedpenny.com/faq.php

The current melt ban is only on 1-cent and 5-cent coins. There is no law against melting 90% silver coins (or any other coins for that matter).

Of course I'm not a lawyer...

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

melt. It was the quickest example I could come up with. I know of other forums & sites that have "proof", but I'm really not going to take the time to try and dig through to find out. Midwest melts what you turn in, and pays you 90% of the pure silver gotten from the melt.

In a rapid devaluation of the dollar scenario, you wont have to melt to profit off of hoarding pennies & nickels. Most 90% today is not melted, instead they're traded from investor to investor. Something similar could happen with the base metal coins.

A nickel will be recognized as having value as an industrial metal, while a $100 bill will not.

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

melt. It was the quickest example I could come up with. I know of other forums & sites that have "proof", but I'm really not going to take the time to try and dig through to find out. Midwest melts what you turn in, and pays you 90% of the pure silver gotten from the melt.

In a rapid devaluation of the dollar scenario, you wont have to melt to profit off of hoarding pennies & nickels. Most 90% today is not melted, instead they're traded from investor to investor. Something similar could happen with the base metal coins.

A nickel will be recognized as having value as an industrial metal, while a $100 bill will not.

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

Like I said - I had a conversation with Silvertown - they refine and mint coins.....I specifically asked them if I got tons of 90% coin - could it be refined into 10 oz bars.....this was back when there was nearly $4/oz premium on 10 oz bars....and you could not find them.....they quoted me a price on refining 90% into 999 bars as well as Comex bars into 10 oz bars.

That and my conversation to several dealers that periodically rid themselves of silver by sending it to places like midwest refiners....and what I read about Midwest.....I thought it was pretty clear that 90% was/is being turned into 999.

If yout could make several dollars per ounce between buying from dealers and selling the refined 999 bars....there was a real opportunity there.

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Since I have some time today, I will use a quick google search to elaborate on thsi. Since this is a link to a competing forum, I will not post the link.

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

90% gets melted

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I personally do micro-sorting. I've accumulated about ten pounds of copper in pennies; but the problem is that my brother's father-in-law said he took pennies to a local scrap dealer, and they wouldn't accept them.

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

I have a jar of pre82 pennies from sorted pocket change but I sure as heck am not going to spend countless hours buying and sorting copper.

I do however, keep a hefty amount of copper hidden in my household in the form of long tubes. It's called water lines. Think of all the pennies you might stash over a significant amount of time and it probably pales in comparison to what you have in your utility room.

Reminds me of the pre 64 coins bank prospectors. With all the time and gas and unpleasantness they put banks through to get a freakin Franklin 50 cent piece, they would spend 1/4 of that amount of time and money just stopping off at the local coin dealer and picking one up there.

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What? Nobody else slabs them? :s9:

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That's a great idea unless you actually want to live in your house. Not to mention, I'm not sure how sorting coins is any more time and labor intensive than tearing your house apart to get to the copper pipes.

Re: How do you store your copper pennies
 

I know of people who have literally tons of copper cents hoarded (from another forum). The comparison you give is kind of spurious at best as it's not practical to tear out your copper lines to profit when the copper price goes up (under the assumption that you are still planning to live in your house) compared to what you can do with copper cents.

As far as the 90% prospectors, you still have to spend time and money to go to the coin shop to pay full retail for a Franklin half. What's the big deal if someone picks up a few rolls or a box while running normal errands to the bank and bringing them back the next time they are in the area? The potential upside is there, and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of people finding nice amounts of silver at face value by doing this. There is also plenty of people who get skunked, but some of us do it as more of a hobby versus hoping and praying to strike it rich. :ok:

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Ah you beat me to it on this point. Also, besides the time and labor required to tear the house apart, the replacement costs for the materials and labor to replace the lines makes the comparison that much more inappropriate.

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ME, I'm trying to strike it rich.:bull-smile: HH Mark

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lol, no kidding Mister 1000 oz!! :OP