Realcent.org

Lemon Thrower.. it was a few years ago.. the first time copper went over $4 a pound. Not everybody was getting that price, but I had a standing order for that price for all I could deliver.. so I delivered a bunch.

Again this is a false dichotomy. Diversify, Diversify, Diversify! The same arguements were made on this forum when silver hit $25.00, $30.00.....etc. Buy a Ryedale/hand sort, hoard Copper. Search ebay, flea markets, coin shops, or this forum, and buy silver/gold. More than that perhaps buy some Yuan, Australian and/or Canadian dollars to boot. Don't put your eggs in one basket! How's that for an Easter illustration!

its not a false dichotomy because you only have so much time and money. the value in copper cents depends on (1) your ability to get supply and sort, and (2) governmental change. if you are patient there is definite value, but not necessarily liquidity. the value in silver has more liquidity but less guarantee about future price appreciation. still, i think betting against government paper is as close to a sure thing as you can get. if any of you copper buffs want to trade your silver for my copper, let me know.

nice little post with a subtle promotion to finish.

I'm torn between hoarding copper or just buying into index funds.

I agree with everything in concept the OP stated except one tinsy little fact he omitted.... The one cent US coin in NOT copper bullion. It is brass. It's the same brass they use on full metal jackets on bullets and is called "gilding metal". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilding_metal

They will never be worth 100% of "melt value" to anyone savvy in metals.

Brass cents are a good investment within a diversified portfolio of metals. Hoard them all you want, sell them all you want, but don't delude yourselves into thinking they are the equivalent of 100% copper bullion. It ain't so!

It reminds me of the bank fiasco of 2008, where banksters bundled up large lots of mortgages and sold them as investments to people. They didn't care there was an illusion to the investments and that it could go sour. Then the fools turned around and bought each others bad paper! You know the rest of the story.

Sheikh_yer_Bu'Tay wrote:I agree with everything in concept the OP stated except one tinsy little fact he omitted.... The one cent US coin in NOT copper bullion. It is brass. It's the same brass they use on full metal jackets on bullets and is called "gilding metal". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilding_metal

They will never be worth 100% of "melt value" to anyone savvy in metals.

Brass cents are a good investment within a diversified portfolio of metals. Hoard them all you want, sell them all you want, but don't delude yourselves into thinking they are the equivalent of 100% copper bullion. It ain't so!

It reminds me of the bank fiasco of 2008, where banksters bundled up large lots of mortgages and sold them as investments to people. They didn't care there was an illusion to the investments and that it could go sour. Then the fools turned around and bought each others bad paper! You know the rest of the story.

The copper cent is purer copper than "premium junk silver bullion" is pure silver. Something to think about.

Sure, maybe in relation to spot, we'll have to accept the rate that 40% halves get for silver spot. But who cares? That's like 85%-90% of spot. When copper gets going, and people really want those copper cents, you'll see 75% of melt, if not more, paid for a copper cent.

Remember: A copper penny is more pure than a silver half.

JobIII wrote:nice little post with a subtle promotion to finish..

are you referring to me or HCBT and High Roller?

Corsair wrote:The copper cent is purer copper than "premium junk silver bullion" is pure silver. Something to think about.

The way I think about it, copper cents can't be melted while junk silver can.

As long as the govt is still minting new zinc pennies they will not allow you to melt the old ones.

Lemon Thrower wrote:

Corsair wrote:The copper cent is purer copper than "premium junk silver bullion" is pure silver. Something to think about.

The way I think about it, copper cents can't be melted while junk silver can.

As long as the govt is still minting new zinc pennies they will not allow you to melt the old ones.

Again, you are thinking present, while Adam and I and the rest of Team Copper are thinking future. No, right now, pennies can not be melted. But when the melt ban is lifted, even though pennies aren't 100% copper, they will still fetch a very nice percentage of spot, assuming you get hooked up with the right scrap shop. This thread was originally about the correct way to invest $15K for the future. I believe that if you can stock up $15K in pennies for face, or for the relatively cheap 1.5x face, you stand to make much more in ten or fifteen years than if you would pay the ungodly high 34x face for the more-impure silver.

well you can't get copper cents for face today unless you value your time to sort at zero.

if you bought copper cents at 1.5x today in 5-10 years copper might be $9 so you might quadruple your money.

if you buy silver at $46 an oz today if might be $200-500 in 5-10 years, 5-11X your money.

so i respectfully disagree that copper is better than silver long term.

the reason for the expected disparity is that silver is monetary metal and has been supressed while copper has not been supressed. future demand for copper will increase in proportion with future business activity while future demand for silver will increase exponentially as invement money moves from the FIRE economy to the real economy.

just like they won't let you melt silver dimes while they are minting new copper clad ones???

Your statement is not logical.

Lemon Thrower wrote:

Corsair wrote:The copper cent is purer copper than "premium junk silver bullion" is pure silver. Something to think about.

The way I think about it, copper cents can't be melted while junk silver can.

As long as the govt is still minting new zinc pennies they will not allow you to melt the old ones.

i thought it was legal to melt 90% silver coinage but not 95% copper. i may be mistaken about the law, but the fact is you can sell silver for less than 2.5% under melt while copper goes for almost 50% under melt.

Lemon Thrower wrote:i thought it was legal to melt 90% silver coinage but not 95% copper. i may be mistaken about the law, but the fact is you can sell silver for less than 2.5% under melt while copper goes for almost 50% under melt.

You are right about the law. But again, Highroller and I and Team Copper are thinking about the future.

Corsair wrote:

Sheikh_yer_Bu'Tay wrote:I agree with everything in concept the OP stated except one tinsy little fact he omitted.... The one cent US coin in NOT copper bullion. It is brass. It's the same brass they use on full metal jackets on bullets and is called "gilding metal". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilding_metal

They will never be worth 100% of "melt value" to anyone savvy in metals.

Brass cents are a good investment within a diversified portfolio of metals. Hoard them all you want, sell them all you want, but don't delude yourselves into thinking they are the equivalent of 100% copper bullion. It ain't so!

It reminds me of the bank fiasco of 2008, where banksters bundled up large lots of mortgages and sold them as investments to people. They didn't care there was an illusion to the investments and that it could go sour. Then the fools turned around and bought each others bad paper! You know the rest of the story.

The copper cent is purer copper than "premium junk silver bullion" is pure silver. Something to think about.

Sure, maybe in relation to spot, we'll have to accept the rate that 40% halves get for silver spot. But who cares? That's like 85%-90% of spot. When copper gets going, and people really want those copper cents, you'll see 75% of melt, if not more, paid for a copper cent.

Remember: A copper penny is more pure than a silver half.

As I stated originally, I agree with the logic of the OP. Copper bullion has outperformed both silver and gold since the crash of 2008. And I have happily sat on #1 copper waiting for it to continue to grow in price. The future of copper is very bullish.

There are, however, two false dicotimies in the OP.

First, the "melt value" as published on Coinflation is accepted as the target price for copper pennies. That premise is false, for the US one cent coin is NOT investment grade copper bullion. It is brass. Gilding metal brass to be specific. It will never fetch spot prices to anyone with working knowledge of investment metals.

Second is almost identical to the first. The premise that "Copper Penny Bullion Investing" is investing into copper bullion. That is false. When you invest in "copper" pennies, you are buying a copper/zinc alloy called "gilding metal" brass, NOT bullion grade copper . No matter how fine you split hairs about copper pennies are more pure than a silver half, it does not matter. It is still a brass alloy and not copper bullion and no one who makes their living with metals will buy into that false premise.

I have said it before and I will say it again. Brass cent peices are a good long term investment and I have many pounds of them to prove it.

The message I am trying to send is that these pennies are not copper bullion and if you invest in them as copper bullion you run the risk of over-paying for a good deal. If you are like P.T. Barnum ("there is a sucker born every minute"), it is okay to sell them as investment grade copper bullion.

Just don't become your own sucker.

On the other hand, if you want high purity copper bars they will likely cost more than the spot price by a fair margin due to economies of scale, might be different if a major mint was pumping them out in large quantities. The Coinflation quotes are not the "true value" of the coins but they give some kind of indication, the prices they fetch on this site give a better idea of what real people would pay you for them today. Maybe "copper" cents, junk silver or Krugerrands are not "bullion" in a purist sense but for many they are close enough.

It is legal to melt 90%, but that's my point, they are still making new dimes, yet it is still legal to melt old dimes.

You said they won't let you melt the copper pennies while they are still making zinc ones....what logic is that based on???
I'm not sure how you think that is true, because they may lift the melt ban even if the penny stays, just like they made it legal to melt 90% dimes, even though they still made dimes.

Also, as I have pointed out 100 times, the fact that you can go to your bank and get copper pennies for face value is doing more to suppress the price of copper pennies more than any other factor.

If you could go down to the bank and carry home boxes with 20% silver dimes in them, it would really hurt the 90% silver dime market, don't you think?

Lemon Thrower wrote:i thought it was legal to melt 90% silver coinage but not 95% copper. i may be mistaken about the law, but the fact is you can sell silver for less than 2.5% under melt while copper goes for almost 50% under melt.

JobIII wrote:nice little post with a subtle promotion to finish.

I'm torn between hoarding copper or just buying into index funds.

What are the risks/benifits associated with index funds? I am sorry I don't know much about them.

VWBEAMER wrote:You said they won't let you melt the copper pennies while they are still making zinc ones....what logic is that based on???

that is not my logic, it is Congress'.

sounds like people think copper is better than silver either because they ascribe zero value to their time or because they expect copper to outperform silver in the future. i seriously doubt copper will outperform silver or gold in the future, especially silver. copper as a base metal will increase in price due to the general level of worldwide business activity and the money supply. monetary metals will increase due to shifting investment demand. silver will increase more due to the end of its unique suppression and related short covering and compression in the GSR.

Since the melt ban was supposed to be to protect against shortages, you might expect that it could be lifted for pennies after the percentage drops off to the point where removing the remaining amount would not have a significant impact on the remaining population of circulating coins. That condition could easily be satisfied whether or not there is a second composition change to steel or something else. Really though there is no sure way to know how or when (or even whether) the melt ban will be lifted. Melting is not really necessary to realize higher values though, wheat cents frequently trade for over melt value although they are illegal to melt. All it takes is for fellow investors to believe the coins hold value.

psi wrote:Since the melt ban was supposed to be to protect against shortages, you might expect that it could be lifted for pennies after the percentage drops off to the point where removing the remaining amount would not have a significant impact on the remaining population of circulating coins. That condition could easily be satisfied whether or not there is a second composition change to steel or something else. Really though there is no sure way to know how or when (or even whether) the melt ban will be lifted. Melting is not really necessary to realize higher values though, wheat cents frequently trade for over melt value although they are illegal to melt. All it takes is for fellow investors to believe the coins hold value.

Yes, that is true. As China dumps the dollar panic will set in. People will buy "Copper Penny Bullion Investing" at an over-valued premium! Just don't buy into your own hype.

Congress has made no such law.

Find it for me.

Lemon Thrower wrote:

VWBEAMER wrote:You said they won't let you melt the copper pennies while they are still making zinc ones....what logic is that based on???

that is not my logic, it is Congress'.

VWBEAMER wrote:Congress has made no such law.

Find it for me.

Lemon Thrower wrote:

VWBEAMER wrote:You said they won't let you melt the copper pennies while they are still making zinc ones....what logic is that based on???

that is not my logic, it is Congress'.

here you go.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&sqi=2&ved=0CCgQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usmint.gov%2Fdownloads%2Fconsumer%2F5111dFinalRuleDraft.doc&rct=j&q=final%20rule%20melt%20export&ei=q-m2TY7QB4SbtwfakPB4&usg=AFQjCNGFHRB52tYHACmJldRGiFOKNreLhg&cad=rja

A. That was put in force by the mint, not Congress.

B. It does not mention that copper pennies will be illegal to melt until they stop making zinc pennies. All it states is that it illegal to melt pennies now. There is no correlation between zinc pennies being minted and copper pennies being melted.

Lemon Thrower wrote:

JobIII wrote:nice little post with a subtle promotion to finish..

are you referring to me or HCBT and High Roller?

I was joking about the first post in this topic and how it finishes just before HR's signature. I didn't see HCBT or your self promoting comments. I'll have to go back and look.



Silver is better, no copper is better oh really foo!