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I don't know a lot about stacking copper. Looking for a little knowledge. I won at auction locally a 1 lb. bar of .9995 copper. I bid on it as a impulse. I paid $9 for it. Is this the most cost effective way to stack copper? Is there any websites to look at to get a feel for the copper market. Any help anybody here can provide would greatly be appreciated.

Copper pennies are definitely a more cost effective stacking method. With copper at roughly $3 a lb your bar was 3x spot price. Copper pennies (if acquired from sorting) at .01 per are today worth a hair over .02 in copper per. So by sorting you are stacking copper at 50% of spot price. There are a lot of other factors to consider. Your bar is .9995 pennies are .95. You can melt your bar you can not currently melt a penny. Even if you choice to buy pennies here on realcent you'd likley pay 1.4-1.5x face which is still well below copper melt value.

What is the chance that the US government will do away with the penny or just make another composite - copper to copper/zinc and maybe to steel. Stacking pennies that will never be legal to melt. Is there a chance that our government will take a hint from our neighbors to the north and do away with the penny all together. I am some what taken aback at the space required to will take up stacking pennies in 5 gallon pails. The whole stacking copper is a mystery to me. Just trying to wrap my head around it. Is there any base metal websites i can look at?

That's the million dollar question. When / if they will be legal to melt and or trade for their copper value. I believe at some point they will trade similar to 90% silver coins. But when will that be? who knows... decades? multiple decades? perhaps. But I do know that in 1964 (had i been alive) I would have loved to have had the foresight to be stacking silver coinage. There are certainly more informed people here who will hopefully chime in. As far as base metal information i'd check out the copper penny section of the forum and look at older posts a lot of good information there over the years. Its all buried there somewhere.

My copper pennies are my long term insurance. Once I convert paper to pennies it wont be seen again until my grandchildren get it.
There are certainly better investments with better short term profit which can be converted.
Regardless of a government decree, copper is a commodity which will stand through generations.
As a Stacker I have learned more here than any book. Beyond copper as a hobby I imagine the quest for more in depth knowledge could be found in local university library.

Would you rather have a paper dollar /number on a bank account or one hundred copper pennies?

wheeler_dealer wrote:My copper pennies are my long term insurance. Once I convert paper to pennies it wont be seen again until my grandchildren get it.
There are certainly better investments with better short term profit which can be converted.
Regardless of a government decree, copper is a commodity which will stand through generations.
As a Stacker I have learned more here than any book. Beyond copper as a hobby I imagine the quest for more in depth knowledge could be found in local university library.

Would you rather have a paper dollar /number on a bank account or one hundred copper pennies?

Long term is my vision also. My favourite stories are the collections uncovered that are 2, 3, 4 thousand years old. Still have their value.

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