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My 5 gallon plastic buckets have started failing making a huge mess. They were OK for a few years, but the combination of age and the weight of the pennies has caught up to them. If you are storing in 5 gallon plastic buckets, this is fair warning. I am in the process of moving everything into steel drums which I painted on the inside. They will be impossible to move but hopefully they won't ever burst or have their bottoms fall out...

We use 1 Gal ziplocks for 10# put that inside a tyvek envelop from the post office, then ship that in a flat rate box. We deal with so many bank tellers that only only weigh 90 pounds we try and keep our operations light enough for everybody to handle.

I guess if I was just storing it for long term, I would something like you state, steel drums.

horgad wrote:My 5 gallon plastic buckets have started failing making a huge mess. They were OK for a few years, but the combination of age and the weight of the pennies has caught up to them. If you are storing in 5 gallon plastic buckets, this is fair warning. I am in the process of moving everything into steel drums which I painted on the inside. They will be impossible to move but hopefully they won't ever burst or have their bottoms fall out...

Were they just stacked to high or what?

I am very familar with these 5 gal pails (Plastican type) since I used them at my job for last 25 years.

Some tips:

- When full, always make sure the lid is secure and tight.
- Do not overfill them.
- Do not stack more than 2 pails high.
- Excessive heat (both hot and cold) tends to weaken the plastic over time and causes cracks/failure.

There are a few of the old, iron type buckets around if you search them out.

The biggest problem with them is their bottoms. There is a small gap between the bottom rim and the bottom of the bucket. Over time the bottom sags and tries to reach the ground. Eventually it succeeds and the bottom tears in a clean circle just inside the bottom rim. So everything looks OK until you try to move the bucket. Also I had one totally split down the side and I had to move a bunch of buckets to clean it up...which is why I found the other problem. My buckets were stacked 3 high, but I had broken buckets at the middle layer as well as the bottom layer (not sure about the top but I think there were some broke there too). I did notice that only one type of bucket was breaking (about 50% of them). They all came from the same bakery, but some of them look a little different than others. Either way I don't trust any of them anymore and will have them all replaced with steel barrels in the next month or so.

Also note that I tried to fill these buckets very full because I knew there would be a bucket on top and I wanted it resting on pennies, not on just the lid of the bucket below. However over time the pennies seemed to keep settling (or maybe it was just the bottom of the buckets getting lower), but in any case the some of the buckets above did end up resting on unsupported lids and a few lids were broken as well.

I use M1A1 and M19 steel ammo cans. The M19s (skinny ones) hold exactly 70 rolls of quarters. They are water tight, stack nicely, have handles and when full are not to heavy to move easily. Of course, I get them for free from work.

You get them for free? You are a lucky man. How many can you get? I'll buy a pallets worth from you. My father in law was an ammo guy in the Air Force and he always tells me how he would give these away to everyone because they just had too many kicking around. I wish I knew him back then. I can't seem to find a good cheap source and these would be fantastic to use for a bunch of things, including pennies.

BOHICA wrote:I use M1A1 and M19 steel ammo cans. The M19s (skinny ones) hold exactly 70 rolls of quarters. They are water tight, stack nicely, have handles and when full are not to heavy to move easily. Of course, I get them for free from work.

Sounds like a good selling opportunity....

As I am in Cali I don't think it would save any thing.

I can hook up friends with a few here and there but, If I were to sell them I would be in deep Kimchee.

highroller4321 wrote:

BOHICA wrote:I use M1A1 and M19 steel ammo cans. The M19s (skinny ones) hold exactly 70 rolls of quarters. They are water tight, stack nicely, have handles and when full are not to heavy to move easily. Of course, I get them for free from work.

Sounds like a good selling opportunity....

That's what I was thinking. And he wouldn't even have to go far. Surely many here would keep him busy.

Interesting news. Right now i have 4 gal buckets stacked 3 high. And they are filled to the brim and look to be doing okay. The temp may get a little cold during the winter but never excessively hot. Perhaps I need to switch to stacks of 2 max...

Maybe some plywood scrap under the buckets, to support the center?

Free tyvek bags from the post office. Fifty dollar bags. They stack nice and are ready to grab and put in a flat rate box if I decide to sell once in a while. They are kind of akward to move until you know how to hold one on each arm. But makes it easy to keep track of FV of the hoard.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, half-gallon plastic juice bottles are the best. They hold 3000 pennies with a little room to spare, and they only weigh twenty pounds. Easy to move, and easily stackable with a board in between the columns. NO buckets for this copperhead!

I use 1 gallon plastic mayo and salad dressing jars from a local pizza place. They throw them away,, they hold 35# and stack ok...

BOHICA wrote:As I am in Cali I don't think it would save any thing.

I can hook up friends with a few here and there but, If I were to sell them I would be in deep Kimchee.

I am in Cali also. Can we be friends?

Wow.. so my 5 gal hoard is going to crack... and I thought my foundation would have issues first... lol

BOHICA wrote:I use M1A1 and M19 steel ammo cans. The M19s (skinny ones) hold exactly 70 rolls of quarters. They are water tight, stack nicely, have handles and when full are not to heavy to move easily. Of course, I get them for free from work.

Regardless of BOHICA's ability, I guess I'm surprised by now that there isn't someone here with some connections that could obtain them in bulk. I would personally take at least a couple dozen of them if I could get them at $5 each for reasonably clean ones. I suspect in total the membership here would buy thousands if available at that. They are $10 each here locally, and at that most of those are nasty. Rusted, used in the field for who knows what, etc. Anyone have any connections?

I keep hearing rumbles about all mil-surp being destroyed instead of sold. Maybe they figure us redneck, terrorist, conservatives might find a military use for empty boxes.

Mossy wrote:I keep hearing rumbles about all mil-surp being destroyed instead of sold. Maybe they figure us redneck, terrorist, conservatives might find a military use for empty boxes.

Unfortunately that is partly true. They made it so hard for us to turn them into DRMO that it is easier and cheaper for us to shred them and sell the scrap. To conform to the regulations would require us to spend 100+ man hours per month. Most of the active duty using units can afford to do that but unfortunately we cannot.

I can grab half a dozen after every test that I do for 'Personal Use'.

@Horde, where are you in Cali? I'm in the IE and travel up the 395 through Bishop regularly.

Bohica, you a Schlock Mercenary fan?
(From Wiki):
1. Pillage, then burn. (7 February 2002)[20]
2. A Sergeant in motion outranks a Lieutenant who doesn't know what's going on. (31 July 2009)[21]
3. An ordnance technician at a dead run outranks everybody. (1 November 2009)[22]
4. Close air support covereth a multitude of sins. (14 April 2008)[23]
5. Close air support and friendly fire should be easier to tell apart. (21 April 2010)[24]
6. If violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it. (13 March 2005)[25]
8. Mockery and derision have their place. Usually, it's on the far side of the airlock. (21 November 2002)[26]
9. Never turn your back on an enemy. (8 March 2003)[27]
10. Sometimes the only way out is through. . . through the hull. (17 January 2009)[28]
11. Everything is air-droppable at least once. (15 April 2008)[29]
12. A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head. (21 November 2002)[26]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlock_Mercenary

Ok - I've learned something "new". Never paid attention to this, if I've even heard of it. Interesting. I think I might have heard of webcoms, but never looked at one.

@Mossy, I'd heard of it but never read it 'til now. I'm in stitches over here! Now I have another 'Time Sink' to waste away the days with.

68Camaro wrote:

BOHICA wrote:I use M1A1 and M19 steel ammo cans. The M19s (skinny ones) hold exactly 70 rolls of quarters. They are water tight, stack nicely, have handles and when full are not to heavy to move easily. Of course, I get them for free from work.

Regardless of BOHICA's ability, I guess I'm surprised by now that there isn't someone here with some connections that could obtain them in bulk. I would personally take at least a couple dozen of them if I could get them at $5 each for reasonably clean ones. I suspect in total the membership here would buy thousands if available at that. They are $10 each here locally, and at that most of those are nasty. Rusted, used in the field for who knows what, etc. Anyone have any connections?

S&H is usually the factor in those ammo cans. The smallest can is a good $6-$8 postage.....at the Parcel Post rate. You could fit the two smallest cans out there in a medium flate rate box, but that instantly makes the cost extremely prohibitive.....it's an easy 100-175% markup on the cans original price in many cases.