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I'm opening around 20-40 rolls a day and averaging 14-18 percent copper. Had one strange roll with only two coppers , but both were 1974 in solid AU condition.

As mentioned in another post, I sorted 10 rolls while in Florida last week. Only 12 percent copper. Only one wheat, and it was in crappy condition.

Picked up my first box of cents in a long while. The branch says I can get one every week if I want. Was looking forward to a hand sort tonight, but I doubt my percentages are going to be all that high...lol

Morsecode wrote:Picked up my first box of cents in a long while. The branch says I can get one every week if I want. Was looking forward to a hand sort tonight, but I doubt my percentages are going to be all that high...lol

When I get skunked like that (which is happening to me MUCH more frequently) I don't unroll them, I just put them away. MS condition. In 20 years they'll be worth $$$.

That's what I was thinking. Looks like a box of Philly '21.

Course, at my age I may not have 20 years for a price increase

There's always a chance some newly discovered error pops up. Then an "unsearched" box could pay handsomely.

LOL! We're already rich...Wheeee!

Morsecode wrote:LOL! We're already rich...Wheeee!

Are you? Congrats! Don't forget your friends here on Realcent who have encouraged you, lo, these many years.

I haven't been in the forums in a while. So looking at this thread I was shocked in 2022 people across the country were seeing yields of upwards of 30%. Of course then i realized i was on page 1 which was around 2011...

Hats off to anyone that kept this going for the past decade, and after the penny arcades stopped taking our coin.

I sort 4-5 days a week, 10-40 rolls a day. Continuing to average 16-18 percent. Busy buying more rolls now. Buy/sort/sell and or hoard while u can! I am doing all of the above.

Silver4face wrote:I sort 4-5 days a week, 10-40 rolls a day. Continuing to average 16-18 percent. Busy buying more rolls now. Buy/sort/sell and or hoard while u can! I am doing all of the above.

Good for you. I'm lucky if I get 5% per box. Too many zincs now diluting the Cu. My CU gets the boxes with the peek holes in the top of it. Loomis?

I just finished my first box of BWR cents in years (not counting the 2021 box which I'm still going through)

10 BU Lincolns '60s & '70s
9 early Elizabeths, earliest '53
2 George, '40 & '44
12 wheats, with a '36 and a '38 (all of which are pretty beat)
1 2009 Lincoln Formative Years (haven't seen one in the wild for many moons)
8.36 pre-'82 coppers (saving none of the '82s)

I'm guessing a 33% return is juuust a tad higher than usual nowadays, but still fun to land a rich one once in a while. Certainly not a large enough sample to make conclusions. In 2011, I was sorting 5 to 7 boxes a week and my average then was around 28%.

Cu Penny Hoarder wrote:

Silver4face wrote:I sort 4-5 days a week, 10-40 rolls a day. Continuing to average 16-18 percent. Busy buying more rolls now. Buy/sort/sell and or hoard while u can! I am doing all of the above.

Good for you. I'm lucky if I get 5% per box. Too many zincs now diluting the Cu. My CU gets the boxes with the peek holes in the top of it. Loomis?

Some are Loomis, but the majority are CWR's

Morsecode wrote:I just finished my first box of BWR cents in years (not counting the 2021 box which I'm still going through)

10 BU Lincolns '60s & '70s
9 early Elizabeths, earliest '53
2 George, '40 & '44
12 wheats, with a '36 and a '38 (all of which are pretty beat)
1 2009 Lincoln Formative Years (haven't seen one in the wild for many moons)
8.36 pre-'82 coppers (saving none of the '82s)

I'm guessing a 33% return is juuust a tad higher than usual nowadays, but still fun to land a rich one once in a while. Certainly not a large enough sample to make conclusions. In 2011, I was sorting 5 to 7 boxes a week and my average then was around 28%.

I do not save the 82's either. My numbers are '81 and back. Also, I do save the 2009 if they are in MS/BU condition. I sometimes can sell 2009 for 2x face.

I received some hand rolls the other day; they were rolled in 1990-91. I could tell by the fact that the mint ones were from those years, and there were no other pennies more recent than that. So a snapshot back in time showed about 45% coppers. A few wheats were found, but perhaps some had been taken out by the person rolling them. Interesting time machine!

Silver4face wrote:I've been sorting off and on for almost 10 years. It was around 25-28 in 2011, 2012 etc, but now I estimate 18-20 percent. I did a box study ten days ago and will report numbers in the appropriate forum

BUMP! I am reviving this semi-old thread. The above post in quotes is from my FIRST day as a member of this fine site. That was three years ago, and I would like to point out that my percentages are still the same as they were three years ago. This despite meeting a large competitor just 40 miles away, and seeing evidence of competition just 15 miles away. I am guessing that there has been MAJOR copper dumps in my area. How else do you explain me maintaining the same average for THREE YEARS?

Silver4face wrote:

Silver4face wrote:I've been sorting off and on for almost 10 years. It was around 25-28 in 2011, 2012 etc, but now I estimate 18-20 percent. I did a box study ten days ago and will report numbers in the appropriate forum

BUMP! I am reviving this semi-old thread. The above post in quotes is from my FIRST day as a member of this fine site. That was three years ago, and I would like to point out that my percentages are still the same as they were three years ago. This despite meeting a large competitor just 40 miles away, and seeing evidence of competition just 15 miles away. I am guessing that there has been MAJOR copper dumps in my area. How else do you explain me maintaining the same average for THREE YEARS?

You've been very fortunate. I barely see any Cu anymore. 95% of the pennies I get in change are zinc.

The only time I sort in pennies is in bulk, when I have access to a hoard or old relatives penny jar.

Unless I get a dumped hoard. Which we all like to get. In run of the mill I am still 10-12 ,still, the lowest in the country.

How do you know that it's the lowest in the country? I would love to see results from all 50 states. I am wondering if there are any states without a significant sorter.

At this point, probably. Not like the heyday

I think people are severely underestimating the sheer size of the total circulating penny supply in America. There have been something like 300 billion Lincoln cents minted since 1959. 300 BILLION.

Even after you account for attrition and hoarding, the number of pennies in circulation is so enormous that it boggles the mind.

300 billion pennies would fill more than 90 olympic sized swimming pools!!! Completely fill them!!!

Us copper sorter/hoarders, we think that an industrial pallet filled with boxes of copper pennies is a whole lot. And sure, it looks like a lot. But it is the merest drop in the ocean compared to the raw supply.

Also, the supply of local regions gets mixed into the supply from bordering regions. Coins circulate in and out of federal bank districts constantly.

Put in other words... No one penny hoarder is going to made any kind of dent in the copper supply of a region.

The only copper sorting that makes a serious different is when a commercial wrapping company pulls copper out en mass. This is known to happen, Brinks was doing it 10 years ago according to a big court case: https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/cri ... 236181007/

Anyone who has gotten multiple boxes of circulated pennies with zero or near-zero copper, you live in an area where Brinks or another commercial coin wrapper is pulling the copper out of circulation way farther up the food chain.

DC_Penny_Guy wrote:Anyone who has gotten multiple boxes of circulated pennies with zero or near-zero copper, you live in an area where Brinks or another commercial coin wrapper is pulling the copper out of circulation way farther up the food chain.

I was getting LOTS of skunks with the others too, not just Brinks. In fact, about 10-15 years ago the Brinks boxes were yielding the highest % of coppers.

My .02
Location
Location
Location

Location is important, because a) expanding retail commerce is going to drive newly minted coin in that direction, reducing the copper to zinc ratio, and b) areas of professional coin sorting (of any type, whether Portland Mint style, or armor car company) will see reduced ratios over a period of time. It happened in Portland, and that is a fact. I felt I could see a diminishing ratio over time in my area when I was sorting 10 years ago, but at the time it was small enough of a change that I couldn't prove that it was a trend. I think the trend is now obvious.

In the DC area, copper percentages remain quite healthy (knock on wood).

However, it's still super difficult to find pre-1940 Lincoln cents with mint marks. Almost everything is Philly, Philly, Philly... The really old pennies minted out west are so freaking rare around here.

I'd say maybe 1 in 200 wheaties I find in circulation is pre-1940 with a mint mark.

I've already found every single Philly Lincoln cent, so it's killing me... So many empty slots in my album still.

DC_Penny_Guy wrote:However, it's still super difficult to find pre-1940 Lincoln cents with mint marks.

Agreed. Same deal here in CT.