Copper (brass) hording?????

[Guest]

I just posted this on another forum but wanted to post it here as well.
I was doing a little research and I don't see how hording 1944-1982 penny's makes any sense at all. Considering that 1944-1982 penny's are 95% copper and 5% zinc which makes them BRASS not copper. Current price for brass is $2 lb. since 1lb of penny's is 200 penny's ($2 face) what is the point??? Also $2lb is the price for clean bright yellow brass which is market value. When you start looking at scape prices for brass you are losing money hording these penny's. Scape prices are $1.50 lb for yellow brass and less then .73 lb for contaminated brass. So unless you are scraping MS grade penny's ( which would sell for a premium over face) you would get .73 cents for $2 face value. Not a good investment in the least.

[liveandievarieties]

To answer your question my friend, copper is trading at $4.75 a pound. Pre-1982 cents are indeed 95% copper. Other metals are separated in the smelting process, leaving only pure refined copper. There are 143 copper pennies in a pound. You do the math- there are hundreds, if not thousands of people across the country searching penny bags, most separate the copper cents.
Maybe about 5 years ago, easily half of the cents in circulation were copper, I never saved them. I just finished two $50 face penny bags from the bank. 10,000 pennies and only 652 were copper! I'm not the only one saving them.

[graveyard_guy]

It cost $ to remove the zinc and there would be no point in it when the copper that was retrieved would be smelted in to a alloy anyway.

[kloccwork419]

Im with you graveyard. No reason at all to keep them. Ive said it plenty of times, unless your like Bob and keep ALL your cents you looked through, theres no reason to hoard them at all.(Bet he dont run across the same coin twice!!) I keep wheats only,and thats not because the copper. If you want to hoard the copper cents,thats fine, but dont make the reason be for the copper!

[mustbebob]

I do keep all that I have searched through, and that is because I don't want to search through the same coins after I turn them back into circulation. That is strictly a preference, but I do know that every copper coin I have looked through is still here unless I sold it or gave it away. Whether or not people save the coppers is probably because of the 'visions of the $$$ they get in their minds when they realize copper is selling for $4 a pound. This may never come to pass, but I do know one thing...It takes less copper coins to hold my house down in a hurricane than the zinc ones!

[graveyard_guy]

but I do know one thing...It takes less copper coins to hold my house down in a hurricane than the zinc ones!

LOL
I cant afford to keep all the coins I search, I don't have the money or the ROOM to have $100's of dollars in box's laying around.

[kloccwork419]

Better then having thousands of dollars laying around. Nobody is gonna break in and budge barrels of pennies anywhere. Better then a safe!

[Roller]

I also keep copper; for one, the prices quoted in this thread are today's prices. I think we all expect our varieties and errors to be worht more in the future than they are now. Copper will likely be more also. But, from my point of view, I think the government is culling copper coins and shortly they will be as scarce as wheats to find in rolls. Besides, they do not take up all that much space so why not keep them.

[jcuve]

I suppose if people break into empty houses to painstakingly steal copper pipes to sell, one could probably hoard enough copper Lincolns and find someone out there willing to defy the gov.'s orders not to melt, and melt them anyway...