Sorting in South Korea

[SGT_Slaughter]

Been a lurker here for a while.
I'm stationed in South Korea and let me tell you i get some mighty strange looks here when i ask for pennies.
All the U.S. posts in Korea round up or down so pennies are not used.

I took 6 bucks of pennies i had to the bank and the korean lady exclaimed .. where did you get ALL these pennies!

Went to another bank and requested 20 in pennies and was pretty shocked when they had them. They could not figure out why i was sorting.

They thought i was going to go to the USO for the hot dog for a penny deal. yea.. 2000 hot dogs right?

But my banker told me yesterday he had sacks of 100 loose so i got a bag and hand sorted it. Brutal..hand sorting takes forever and over here you have to reroll them to deposit them

found a 1933 d wheat in really good condition (for sale btw)
20.8% copper
various foreign coins, india, panama, old korea 1 won pieces which are not used anymore. (1070 won = 1 dollar)
barbados pennies. 14 canadian pennies.

[OneBiteAtATime]

Have you thought there may be a premium on US Zinc Pennys as a novelty item in S. Korea?

[psi]

Have you tried buying any Korean coins to sort?

[avidbrandy]

That's funny I was just talking to my supervisor last week about no pennies in Korea, because of my coin sorting. He thinks we should just eliminate pennies like in Korea. (he was stationed there a couple years ago).

I have a question: Do you find a higher percentage of coppers there due to less circulation? Also, where do they get their coins from, and how often?

[Verbane]

US coinage on overseas bases is an untapped resource, it rarely circulates back to the States. When I was stationed in Germany, I would make trips to the other bases to get coin from the Base Bank.

[SGT_Slaughter]

The Koreans do not want pennies but they do like 2 dollar bills. They consider them lucky.

I do not know where the pennies come from. I have 2 different banks w/ 4 locations near me. One location never had any pennies. The other had 6 bucks worth and i cleaned them out.
location 3 has a lot but the copper % is horrible!, location 4 usually has very few pennies but recently they got a couple hundred dollars of bag pennies in.

I had sorted some CWR's that a soldier brought in and i got about 26% copper out of it.
sorted 20 bucks from location 2 and i only got 1% copper
out of 100 bucks in the bag i got 20.8% copper so not too bad but a hell of a lot of work given i have to re-roll all of it. Arg!

Its funny though, The korean teller i talk to used to be a Drill SGT in the ROK Army so told him to be on the look out for a few coins for himself and
since then hes been on the look out for pennies for me. They think its amusing.

pennies are about non existant here fyi. you never get them in change.

What would be really interesting is if we had an interactive map that showed copper %'s per city in the U.S. w/ members updating it.

[SGT_Slaughter]

avidbrandy , what post was your supervisor at?

[Cerulean]

Have you tried buying any Korean coins to sort?

There is no point in sorting South Korean coins. The only bronze coin in South Korea since the Korean War was the 10 hwan coin, demonetized in 1962. All South Korean coins in the last fifty years have been brass, copper-nickel, or a weird 50/50 copper-aluminum alloy, and none of the currently circulating coins are over melt value yet.

10 won, minted since 2006, 1.29g, 52% Al and 48% Cu by weight, melt value of USD $0.007. Face value is USD $0.009.
50 won, minted since 1972, 4.16g, 70% Cu and 18% Zn and 12% Ni by weight, melt value of USD $0.036, face value of USD $0.047.
100 won, minted since 1970, 5.42g, 75% Cu and 25% Ni by weight, melt value of USD $0.062, face value of USD $0.093.
500 won, minted since 1982, 7.7g, 75% Cu and 25% Ni by weight, melt value of USD $0.089, face value of USD $0.467.

If you can find any of the old 1970-2005 ten-won coins, they are worth holding on to. Melt value is 265% of face value.

[SGT_Slaughter]

Had a case recently where someone in fact did melt down the 10 won coins which is legal
BUT they did not dispose of the waste byproduct and they went to jail for that.

[AGgressive Metal]

Cool information thanks for sharing sarge.

[Mossy]

Had a case recently where someone in fact did melt down the 10 won coins which is legal
BUT they did not dispose of the waste byproduct and they went to jail for that.

What waste would be produced?

[Chief]

What would be really interesting is if we had an interactive map that showed copper %'s per city in the U.S. w/ members updating it.

I would love to see this.

[Copper Catcher]

SGT_Slaughter welcome to the board. If you want to trade some of the foreign coins you collected for copper pennies and other copper goodies I'll be happy to make you up a package and ship it off to you. Let me know.. Also if you want some $2 bills I can get those for you as well.

[SGT_Slaughter]

Link to the article about koreans melting coins.
http://www.arirang.co.kr/News/News_View ... category=2

i only have a few foreign coins
11x canadian pennies
1x canadian 1867-1967

couple panama pennies
3x barbados pennies
infinite korean coins (LOL)
1x india penny

so most likely its not worth your shipping costs but if your in the market for infinite korean won i can ship to you at cost + shipping in a flat rate box.

i can get 2 dollar bills from my local bank. I dont think the locals will pay extra for them but they just kinda like them. Some solider told them that we think they are lucky thus they are lucky bills here.
thanks for the offer though.

[avidbrandy]

I think my supervisor was Osan Air Base for a year. He's not a penny collector though.

[SGT_Slaughter]

I've been to Osan. Ask him if he knows where Cp Carroll is at.