Hello Everyone!
I'm fairly new to copper penny hoarding. I've started this about two weeks ago and so far I've acquired about 15lbs. of copper pennies and am averaging 26% copper right now. I'm building my own automated penny sorter (don't have the cash for a Ryedale right now), and am looking to sort pennies on a much larger scale. However, I've run into a problem. My bank, US Bank, only gives out penny boxes to businesses (although I have gotten one from a nice teller before). I plan on opening a free business checking account so I can get access to these pennies. I live in a small town, and the banks don't keep that many boxes of pennies on hand, and at US Bank it costs $5 per box of coins that they order for you. That huge fee makes ordering boxes uneconomical.
My idea was to go to multiple banks and see which banks will allow me to buy penny boxes without having a business account, and open a business account at the ones that do require an account. Does this sound like a good idea as long as the fees for the account aren't too high? I'd like to sort around 16 boxes per day with my automated sorter, but living in a small town I expect to only be to get about 2 boxes per day form each bank. Does anyone have any other ideas for sources of large amounts of pennies, other than banks?