What’s The Deal With Penny Hoarders?
The latest metal craze does not seem to involve silver or gold, but the base metal – copper. In fact, some enterprising individuals are actually hoarding pennies. The copper in a “copper penny” is actually worth almost 2 1/2 cents. So you can see why the government does not use this more valuable metal to mint pennies any longer.
It may just seem frugal to save your pennies. These days, it may be good business too. All the precious metals bugs are watching the value of silver and gold. But have you kept up with the latest news about copper?
A Penny’s Worth Of Copper Equals Almost Two And A Half Cents!
Modern pennies are actually made out of zinc. You need to find pennies that were minted in1982 and earlier because those are the ones that are 95% copper. Some enterprising individuals have even purchased $500 penny sorting machines so they can go through giant bags of pennies to pull out the early, copper ones, and then return the mostly zinc ones to the bank. Otherwise, it could be quite boring and time consuming to sort through giant bags of pennies!
Right now, it is illegal to melt down pennies for their metal. So penny hoarders will just have to hoard. They believe that the laws will change, and the US may even do away with the 1 cent piece. At that time, they believe their fortune will be made.
See The ABC News Video About Penny Hoarding!
The original penny hoarders video from ABC news was here.
