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I bought a bag of pennies from the bank today that supposedly contained $50. It weighed 28 pounds. That's really light, right? I heard these bags don't necessarily contain exactly 5000 pennies, but I assumed it would be pretty close. That's like $6 off.

Am I calculating wrong, or did I get screwed?

If they're all zinc, it could weigh as little as 27.5 lbs.

Yes the weight is fine. You just got lucky enough to get a bag of zincers.

a bag of pennies should weigh 34.28 lbs. Your bag doesn't have many Cu cents in it.

That's the thing though... it does have copper. Pretty good percent, maybe 25.

scyther wrote:That's the thing though... it does have copper. Pretty good percent, maybe 25.

Well start counting then

If there is 25% copper then you probably did not get a full bag.

25% Cu cents in a bag of 5000 should weigh in around 29.21 lbs, you need a better scale or you are shorted.

Well, I used the primitive method of weighing myself without the bag, then with it, and seeing the difference. And the scale is many years old... maybe it's just the scale... I really don't want to count all those pennies...

scyther wrote:Well, I used the primitive method of weighing myself without the bag, then with it, and seeing the difference. And the scale is many years old... maybe it's just the scale... I really don't want to count all those pennies...

How do you hold the bag when you weigh it....that will throw the weight off, too!

Oh....get a real scale if you want to weigh the bags!!!

By all means, get yourself a different scale and weigh just the bag, nothing else

25% is a pretty good percentage.

Yeah, I should probably buy a real scale... and a gram scale... and some acid to test silver... but I'm cheap!

Anyway I just dumped the worthless zincs and it came to about $35. I'm pretty sure I took out enough coppers, 2009s, 1982s, Canadians, and random pennies I found interesting to make up the last $15. So I guess I was worried about nothing.