How much should a bag of pennies weigh?

[scyther]

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?

[Morsecode]

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

[NDFarmer]

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

[fasteddy]

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

[scyther]

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

[NHsorter]

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

Well start counting then

[NDFarmer]

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

[fasteddy]

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

[scyther]

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...

[TheJonasCollegeFund]

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!!!

[Sheba]

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

25% is a pretty good percentage.

[scyther]

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.