Realcent.org

I have been wondering lately:

When the melt ban is lifted and I have several tons of pennies to dispose of who will buy them. How will the scrap yard know to trust me when I say that they are all copper?

You can sell them to a scrap yard. The copper in the coins is standardized, so they have nothing to fear.

Here is a tip: Never let them unload your scrap metal unless you know exactly how much per pound/ per ton they are going to pay for it first.

I learned that the hard way, I had almost a ton of scrap copper metal flashings in my trailer. I phoned ahead and was told they would pay so much.... only to have them tell me the price dropped while I was being unloaded!! I got clipped for about $600

Better yet, sell them to other people who will be searching for copper "bullion" cents. Most likely you will fetch a higher price that way.

The only thing that I was thinking is: How do they know they have been sorted correctly and that I didn't mix in some zinc for the heck of it. They are not going to check the dates on every single coin. What will make it easy for them to want to accept the coins?

Also, for $600 I would have reloaded the whole load.

I wouldn't be supprised to someday see a cash for pennies outfit that travels around with volume sorters setting up in hotel lobbys.

Sound crazy.......think again.

If there is true concern, they can simply run them through a high-speed counter to get a count, weigh them, do the math. Pass or fail. Fast, cheap, and accurate. They could also run a quick random sample through a comparitor, and if more than 1 zinc in 1000 pops out, reject the batch. Etc. I don't see this as a problem.

I don't know that it will be necessary to melt them all. Copper pennies (and CuNi Nickels) could be used for small transactions and to make change in a post-fiat economy.

I was just wondering. I am sure that once you prove that you have a good product, they will take them, but there will need to be some method of proving that they are pure.

Sheikh_yer_Bu'Tay wrote:You can sell them to a scrap yard. The copper in the coins is standardized, so they have nothing to fear.

Here is a tip: Never let them unload your scrap metal unless you know exactly how much per pound/ per ton they are going to pay for it first.

I learned that the hard way, I had almost a ton of scrap copper metal flashings in my trailer. I phoned ahead and was told they would pay so much.... only to have them tell me the price dropped while I was being unloaded!! I got clipped for about $600

Better yet, sell them to other people who will be searching for copper "bullion" cents. Most likely you will fetch a higher price that way.

I spoke to my scrap yard supervisor on my last scrap run.

He said 'it is illegal as hell' to scrap Canadian cents and he would not touch even obosolete coins.


They are doing fine with steel and base metal scrap. He wanted no part of it.

I think that in the future, they will be more valuable as coins than as scrap.
I think a market will develop (it is already) and you will simply sell them to a coin dealer or to
another collector.

A question I've been thinking about is; if the penny is removed from general circulation, and the law on melting pennies is removed, don't you think that the treasury itself will melt as much of its own stock in pennies that it can, and flood the copper market with this supply of "new" copper, thus collapsing the price of copper?

Wondering what other peoples thoughts are on this...

knibloe wrote:The only thing that I was thinking is: How do they know they have been sorted correctly and that I didn't mix in some zinc for the heck of it. They are not going to check the dates on every single coin. What will make it easy for them to want to accept the coins?

Also, for $600 I would have reloaded the whole load.

They had separated the load into three different sections of the yard based upon the condition the metal was in. Much of it had solder on it, some had some roofing tar on it, some was clean. It was mixed in with all the others and it would have been time consuming to sort it back out. That was back when my telephone was ringing off the hook and I had about 8 months in contracts ahead of me running four crews. I needed the trailer for other projects. (That sure ain't the way it is now.)

I remember Hoard posting a comment about talking to a scrap yard owner before the melt ban. The guy didn't know the law and was reluctant to take the coins. After the ban, the man told Hoard he had been right and wished he took HCBTT up on his offer.

I spoke to the Prez of the largest scrap company in my region about it. This was August of 2008. The man was converting as much FRN into PM's as he could. When I told him about people hoarding brass cents for the day the melt ban is lifted.... he just looked at me like I was crazy. Didn't say a word.

knibloe wrote:I have been wondering lately:

When the melt ban is lifted and I have several tons of pennies to dispose of who will buy them. How will the scrap yard know to trust me when I say that they are all copper?

Who will but copper pennies? The same kind of people that buy old junk silver coins. It will not be done at a scrap yard. You will need to sell online, ebay, etc.. or to a dealer who is willing to handle the volume. The "size" of transactions is the only difference between "junk silver" now and "junk copper" in the future. But I'm sure there will be guys out there willing to take it off your hands (as long as the price of copper is at or higher than it is today)

Jackson Metals

They were sorting and melting prior to the ban.

They lobbied for an exemption and didn't get one.

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2007/11 ... t_ban.html

Jackson Metals believes it can make a profit and save the U.S. Mint more than $18 million annually through a plan to sift through roughly 5 billion pennies a year and cull high-copper-content coins...

While it waits for a verdict on its plan to pinch pennies from pennies, Jackson Metals has kept its workers busy combing through Canadian nickels to find coins minted between 1946 and 1981 that were made of pure nickel and are currently worth 14.3 U.S. cents.

They've also been sorting through $14 million worth of half-dollar coins from throughout the country to cull silver coins made before 1964.

Note: article is from November of 2007

NiBullionCu wrote:Jackson Metals

They were sorting and melting prior to the ban.

They lobbied for an exemption and didn't get one.

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2007/11 ... t_ban.html

Jackson Metals believes it can make a profit and save the U.S. Mint more than $18 million annually through a plan to sift through roughly 5 billion pennies a year and cull high-copper-content coins...

While it waits for a verdict on its plan to pinch pennies from pennies, Jackson Metals has kept its workers busy combing through Canadian nickels to find coins minted between 1946 and 1981 that were made of pure nickel and are currently worth 14.3 U.S. cents.

They've also been sorting through $14 million worth of half-dollar coins from throughout the country to cull silver coins made before 1964.

Note: article is from November of 2007

"I think we've recovered the last of the silver coins," says Luhrman. "Our process is very thorough."

Doesnt seem to be the case...silver is still out there.

I found a 64 Ken this mornin'.

We'll be able to load up shipping containers of copper pennies and send them to China. Ready market there.

Even if every copper penny ever made was scrapped in one month (highly unrealistic) there are not enough copper pennies to impact the spot price of copper.

DebtFreeMe wrote:A question I've been thinking about is; if the penny is removed from general circulation, and the law on melting pennies is removed, don't you think that the treasury itself will melt as much of its own stock in pennies that it can, and flood the copper market with this supply of "new" copper, thus collapsing the price of copper?

Wondering what other peoples thoughts are on this...

I doubt the treasury has any stock of copper pennies. They stopped making them 30 years ago. If anyone has a huge stock of pennies it would be the Federal Reserve and those would just be recent 2010 and 2011 zincs.

Sheikh_yer_Bu'Tay wrote:You can sell them to a scrap yard. The copper in the coins is standardized, so they have nothing to fear.

Here is a tip: Never let them unload your scrap metal unless you know exactly how much per pound/ per ton they are going to pay for it first.

I learned that the hard way, I had almost a ton of scrap copper metal flashings in my trailer. I phoned ahead and was told they would pay so much.... only to have them tell me the price dropped while I was being unloaded!! I got clipped for about $600

Better yet, sell them to other people who will be searching for copper "bullion" cents. Most likely you will fetch a higher price that way.

Yep as soon as they told me the price dropped thats when they would be putting it right back on the truck.

TwoAndAHalfCents wrote:
I doubt the treasury has any stock of copper pennies. They stopped making them 30 years ago. If anyone has a huge stock of pennies it would be the Federal Reserve and those would just be recent 2010 and 2011 zincs.

I'm not saying they do have a stock of them, but wouldn't they or the Fed be in a position to purchase high speed sorters and start doing what we're doing, only on an industrial basis. Since most coinage will probably float through the banking system at one time or another throughout the year, they could quickly pull a large amount of the copper out of the system.

Also, what has happened to the supply of the copper pennies over the years? Have so many "new" pennies been created, that 80% of the current in circulation stock are all new money? Or, is it that they have been getting pulled out of circulation to melt down and make zinc pennies? I can't imagine that most of the copper pennies have been destroyed or lost over the years.

"I think we've recovered the last of the silver coins," says Luhrman. "Our process is very thorough."

Um.. I think I recover as much as people dump back into the machine counters at the banks... lol
As long as they don't melt it I will always be pulling silver out of boxes and bags...

Pennies... I'm stacking just as fast as I can carry them back to the back and get more.... I hope I have a few more years to stack before things really get out of hand or it is over.....