by frugi » Tue Oct 28, 2014 8:24 am
i always have sorted by hand. When i first started sorting, it was at a dead end job at a retail store (nobody came in to buy anything ever). I had 8 hour days of pure boredom, so I was bringing in 2 boxes of pennies every day, sorting them, returning to the bank in the evening the zincs, and picking up a couple more boxes. I did this for 2 years straight. I figured it was worth it because not only was I amassing copper at several pounds a day, but I was getting paid anyway from my hourly wage at my job.
Then by chance I discovered Canadian coins (cents & nickels). At that point, I had also lost my job. When my employer hired me, there was 250 employees at the company....Due to inability to compete with similarly made foreign products at a cheaper price, my employer was laying off employees weekly. When I lost my job there was only 12 people left at the company.
So, now unemployed I no longer had the time to sit around and hand sort cents. I had to produce stable income, and that cut into my sorting time. Through little research I found out about .980 Cu Canadian cents, and found (at the time), I could buy Canadian coins at 75% of face value practically anywhere in town at any coin store. Funny thing was is that every shop had them in bulk, and would laugh in my face when I would buy them. Little did they know the actual value.
So, it has been about 7 years now, that whenever I have some extra $$, I just go buy 50 lbs or so of Canadian cents, and hand sort those in the evenings while watching youtube or whatever. I have found out of 50 lbs. of Canadian cents, I will come up with less than 1 lb. of non-copper cents, all the rest is copper. I sort according to type, which is for me.....
Old Georges, Young Georges, Young Queens, Old Queens, 1967 Doves in BU, 1981-1982, 1983-1996 Octagons, and then everything post 1996.
In the end, I have pounds and pounds of the early stuff, and very little of anything newer. My percentages are very high of good copper because these are pennies that have just been sitting around for years in the US, so it is mostly early stuff. I have found many, many rarities, and made much profit from selling those on eBay or to realcent members. I could just buy them and let them sit unsorted, but I enjoy sorting, and find it is better to sort by type in the long run.
It was in the beginning during this time Nickel had reached I believe $25.00+/lb., and so I was buying Canadian nickels like a madman, and selling them to a refinery in bulk hundreds of pounds at a time. That one summer I made thousands of dollars between myself and another person as we drove around the midwest buying all that we could buy.
In the time since Nickel tanked I still buy them (although I pay face for them now). I hand sort again by type & condition. I save everything that isnt Ni bullion, and flip the Ni bullion to members here, and make back my investment, so what it amounts to, is a get gobs of free early Canadian nickels, steelies, BU's, prooflikes, and even some of the 1990's silver proof nickels which are out there, though pretty rare.
Even during this current time now, where copper and nickel is in the pooper, I feel like I have a great investment put together at very little risk.......when nickel and copper go back up, I will still have what I have, and if I ever need some extra $$ I can always scrap the Canadian copper and nickel locally without fear of breaking the laws governing melting US pennies and nickels.
If you ever find yourself with nothing to do, and being plain bored, nothing wrong with sitting around sorting any type of coin from any country, better than wasting time sitting on your ass glued to the TV or whatever.