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I am just wondering what you guys do with your banged up copper pennies???

Throw them back with the zincs or keep em as they are still Copper....
For me i hand sort and keep the copper cents as long as they are not corroded as they still have copper value above their face value...
Just wondering what you guys think...

cheers

The really bad ones, bent ones, can't read the dates, someone poured acid on them or ones with no true collector value as you can't see anything as it's a copper slug now go into a separate box. The greens go into a second box. And the zincs that are so bad that the coin counter rejects the get their own box to be tumbled and cleaned when I have enough.
I'm still in the fence about cleaning the green ones as they might loose value if they are important dates but you can't read them as green slugs so what else can you do with them?

I hand sort and throw all my culls and FUBAR in a designated cup for machine sorting in the future. I don't get too many. My reasoning is copper is copper if it is to be melted and whoever does the melting will reject the zincs.

I keep them ALL. I roll all the UGLY ABES (corroded, scratched, greens, and bent) together and box them in $25 boxes. They are ALL still COPPERs. However, I throw the corroded 1982 COPPERs back in the Zincoln dump. I get about 60 of these UGLY ABES per $25 box and they add up over time.

Will green coppers spread their disease to the clean ones? Is it contagious? Do I need to go back and separate my coins? Rats!

The disease does spread and in my experience, it does so more readily if wrapped in rolls and/or a fairly humid area. I keep all my greenies seperate.

shinnosuke wrote:Will green coppers spread their disease to the clean ones? Is it contagious? Do I need to go back and separate my coins? Rats!

Yes, under the right conditions it can. The really bad ones I just toss back. If they are a little green, I roll them up with the others. Hopefully they will only affect a few others...

Sparechange & AGCoinHunter, thanks for the quick responses. Today my happy chores will include separating the little green Martians from my vast copper holdings.

I put all bent, holed or without readable date coins into their own container. The greenies take a bath for a couple of hours in white (not apple) vinegar. This gets rid of the green or most any other crud of whatever color. I don´t care about compromising any numismatic value: they´re just common date copper pennies.

I save a few; maybe for a mad scientist experiment at some point. Any that are sticky, gum encrusted, painted, or just plain aggravate me for no reason go into the round file with the wrappers. Makes me feel all-powerful and what not...plus it's good for deficit reduction and will make some archaeologist happy digging in the landfill 10,000 years from now.

Morsecode wrote:I save a few; maybe for a mad scientist experiment at some point. Any that are sticky, gum encrusted, painted, or just plain aggravate me for no reason go into the round file with the wrappers. Makes me feel all-powerful and what not...plus it's good for deficit reduction and will make some archaeologist happy digging in the landfill 10,000 years from now.

Must have been my poor upbringing, but I could never throw money away, not even some pennies. In fact, once again today standing at the coin counter in the lobby of my dump bank I noticed 3 pennies and a dime in the trash can. The pennies were bent and must not have gone through the counter. I just carried the them to the counter and deposited them along with the slip of paper from the coin counter. The dime? A total mystery why someone would throw that away.

The really bad green, dirty or otherwise really scummy cents - either Zincolns or Lincolns - go back to the dump bank. It has a free coin counting machine and rarely spits back these ugly little disks. A little corrosion or something like that gets thrown in with the copper as is ... I'm a hand sorter so don't have too much experience with bent, or really badly corroded.

One thing I have noticed about the Zincolns is once in awhle getting one that has chunks around the rim edge missing, as though they were broken off somehow. Don't know what causes that ... but they too go back to the dump bank.

sheba

I put the green and the ones with crud in a plastic bottle of acetic acid(real strong vinegar) and let them soak for 2 days. Rinse them with water and about 50% of them are real shiny and the rest are just normal copper pennies. Out of 100 pennies, I throw @5 back in with the zinc ones. I can reuse the acetic acid for about a month.

all co into the copper pile. Copper is copper.

I sell em to misteroman!

I throw all my copper culls in a pail and when I get 35 lbs of them I sell a bag of culls on feebay. You would be surprised what they will bring.