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What are you hand and ryedale sorters and/or penny hoarders thinking about with copper pulling back so much? Is this just a short term pullback or is the copper bull market dead ? Does it matter either way? Anyone changing their strategy, size of stash, or pace of sorting?

I have been hand sorting for years and keeping all of the copper. My plan has been to hold long term rather than try to make a quick profit. The downward trend in the price of copper over the past months/years hasn't really affected my sorting. Nor has this most recent drop. However, I have started to ramp up the volume that I pick up well above the pace that I can sort. With depressed copper prices and declining copper percentages this may seem irrational. My motivation is to increase my cash holding and do so not in the form of an electronic balance that could become frozen overnight or in the form of paper currency that is easily spent or stolen. No, I'm adding to the pile of actual money that I will be stuck sitting on unless the urgency for spending money is great enough to force me to cash it in.

I'm doing this:

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=34027

I haven't been sorting much. However, I am fortunately very long on cash in the bank. That is a blessing, but it also worries me. I told my wife that I want to have 3-6 months of cash on hand. That however has it's drawbacks as well. Fire, theft, devaluation... I do like 2.5 cents idea of using coins as the cash on hand. It will not likely be destroyed in a fire, much harder to steal and copper would still have to lose another 33% to make the face value and metal value equal. The upside vs. silver is that they are spendable.

TwoAndAHalfCents wrote:I have been hand sorting for years and keeping all of the copper. My plan has been to hold long term rather than try to make a quick profit. The downward trend in the price of copper over the past months/years hasn't really affected my sorting. Nor has this most recent drop. However, I have started to ramp up the volume that I pick up well above the pace that I can sort. With depressed copper prices and declining copper percentages this may seem irrational. My motivation is to increase my cash holding and do so not in the form of an electronic balance that could become frozen overnight or in the form of paper currency that is easily spent or stolen. No, I'm adding to the pile of actual money that I will be stuck sitting on unless the urgency for spending money is great enough to force me to cash it in.

Ditto. Spot on!

Better $100.00 dollars in pennies than a hundred dollar bill. I haven't been buying rolls to sort just working through older bags , boxes as time allows. I figure if I can't make mortgage payment the bank will have no choice to accept them if they want their payment.

I don't sort pennies but I do mess with copper and have more now than I have ever had. im at about 2700-3000 pounds and it is becoming hard to find places to store it. I refuse to sell it for $2-$2.20 a pound. I hope it rebounds soon

This is a tough question to address properly. The potential issue I see is that those who have given up may not even be looking at the realcent.org site as much as they used to. So they won't even know that you asked the question. Your question will be seen for the most part by the hardcore people who remain active users of the site. Unfortunately, that skews the answers that you will receive.

I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'm not selling at this time. On the other hand I'm not running to the bank like I might be if the govt. said they were stopping the minting of pennies altogether.

Part of that is the issue of life getting in the way. I'm very busy with other items (like working OT at my job) that potentially can pay more money. Going through pennies is fun, but in all honesty it is hard to have it justify the time put in.

I wonder what those in the business of bulk coin sorting are doing now... I don't mean that in a flippant or humorous way- I am truly curious about how the business is doing and if owners are worried about the future of their businesses.

smackvay wrote:I don't sort pennies but I do mess with copper and have more now than I have ever had. im at about 2700-3000 pounds and it is becoming hard to find places to store it. I refuse to sell it for $2-$2.20 a pound. I hope it rebounds soon

I think you may have to wait a long time for it to bounce back given how bad the global economy is but I wouldn't sell either if I didn't need the money. Although at $14 silver it would be tempting to convert from Cu to Ag to save space.

AGgressive Metal wrote:

smackvay wrote:I don't sort pennies but I do mess with copper and have more now than I have ever had. im at about 2700-3000 pounds and it is becoming hard to find places to store it. I refuse to sell it for $2-$2.20 a pound. I hope it rebounds soon

I think you may have to wait a long time for it to bounce back given how bad the global economy is but I wouldn't sell either if I didn't need the money. Although at $14 silver it would be tempting to convert from Cu to Ag to save space.

That is a good idea

What is Adam seeing in the market?

slickeast wrote:What is Adam seeing in the market?

You have his number

I've bought copper locally from others who have basically given up the sorting game. If you can buy at 1.1x face it makes no sense to invest time and effort into sorting. But, I am a creature of habit so I continue to do bare minimum hand sorting.

AGressive Metal's suggestion about converting to Ag has me really, really, really thinking. If silver gets much lower I'd even be tempted to liquidate the pennies at face and convert ...

Hoarding copper pennies for me is all about combating fiat currency. Both in the very rare case of a currency system collapse and also to simply make a political point.

So I am still hand sorting...