| Don't throw away those pennies!
Posted: 5/29/2008 4:30:11 AM | Just saw this after doing a web search for something else:
Truly Clueless.
...
"The question that ought to have been asked is "why would a grown man bother with the relative weights of coins?" The obvious answer is that it must be worthwhile to separate them by content.
"But why draw such a distinction between coins that have the same face value? Because one is intrinsically more valuable than the other. Gresham's Law in action, you know, and a sad byproduct of the government destroying the dollar. Because the dollar is in the process of crashing, the copper in a copper cent is now worth about 160% of the face value of the cent. It won't be long before small coins are made out of aluminum, because the government won't be able to find another metal worth as little as its tokens."
...
http://elborak.blogspot.com/2006/03/truly-clueless-when-i-came-home.html
PhillyFellow | |
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| Don't throw away those pennies!
Posted: 5/29/2008 6:36:17 AM | | they stopped making copper pennies years ago dude, where you been? I heard about this like 5 years ago. besides it's against federal law to trade them in as raw copper unless you melt them down. | |
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| Don't throw away those pennies!
Posted: 5/29/2008 6:49:45 AM | | I was told once that it is against the law to deface US currency. I never did understand how they could have those machines at carnivals that would squash a penny into a token in light of that. Oh, and Dude, I'm pretty sure pennies are still all copper. There was only one year that I am aware of that pennies were made of anything but copper, that was during WWII and they made them out of steel but I forget which year it was, perhaps 1944. The government would love to discontinue pennies altogether because they are more expensive to make than they are worth and it has been that way for a long time. | |
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| Don't throw away those pennies!
Posted: 5/29/2008 8:19:45 AM |
Oh, and Dude, I'm pretty sure pennies are still all copper.
Actually they're zinc with copper plating.
http://coins.about.com/od/uscoins/f/copper_to_zinc.htm
Q. Is my Penny a Copper, or a Zinc Cent?
From Susan Headley,
Your Guide to Coins.
FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!
A.
If your Lincoln Memorial penny has a date before 1982, it is made of 95% copper. If the date is 1983 or later, it is made of 97.5% zinc, with a thin copper coating, or "clad."
For pennies minted in 1982, when both copper and zinc cents were made, the safest and best way to tell their composition is to weigh them. Copper pennies weigh 3.11 grams, whereas the zinc pennies weigh only 2.5 grams.
If you don't have a gram scale handy, you can use the "ring" test. You need a hard formica surface, a known copper penny, and a known zinc penny. Drop each one onto the table, listening to its distinctive "ring." Zinc pennies have sort of a flat ring, whereas copper pennies have a higher-pitched, more melodious "ring." Once you have a good feeling for how each type sounds, start dropping your 1982's one at a time, and you should be able to sort them out by metal composition. Obviously, this test isn't as reliable as weighing them, but it should help you sort most of them.
Cherrypicker's Tip - Watch out for "transitional" mint errors! "Transistional" errors occurred on the Lincoln Memorial Cents when the mint accidentally used copper stock for 1983 pennies. These "wrong stock" pennies weigh 3.1 grams, rather than the 2.5 of the zinc cents. If you find a copper 1983, it just might be worth... a pretty penny! | |
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| Don't throw away those pennies!
Posted: 5/29/2008 12:34:35 PM | currently, pennies are 90% zinc and 10% copper. It's a sandwich, not an alloy. this has been going on since 1982.
there have been some modifications of the penny composition from 1909 to 1982 but was largely 95% copper with the remaining being zinc and tin.
i defaced coins for some experiments. i think the intent was to not smelt them in large quantities.
if people recall a stamped Kennedy on a lincoln penny along with similarities of the two presidents, it was a clear case of defacing as well. apaprently our government didn't mind.
sometimes you'll encounter coins that were painted, as if with red, white and blue (and sometimes gold) and aparently again, our government did nothing about it, even when such coins are advertised on tv and magazines.
I'm saving some nickels (75% copper, 25% nickel) for some other uses and the feds can chase me down on defacing 6 coins. | |
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| Don't throw away those pennies!
Posted: 5/29/2008 8:04:19 PM | I've seen very many pennies older than 1982. This isn't really that old. Any one with a penny jar on a shelf probably has lots of them.
To put this in perspective, an immediate 60% return on an investment would be considered quite a good investment!
PhillyFellow | |
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| Don't throw away those pennies!
Posted: 5/30/2008 9:41:24 AM | | got a box of pennies near the door for the charity collecters, just dip in and give them a handful :) | |
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| Don't throw away those pennies!
Posted: 5/30/2008 12:30:29 PM | Gov't need to go back to a solid weight currency system, with fixed prices on precious metals. A "dollar" isn't worth the paper it is written on...but you used to be able to trade it for an equal measure (in buying power) for silver. Not any longer. Passing off "wafers" as coinage sucks...what use is the federal gold reserve if it doesn't even back the dollar it is supposed to do?
China tried this same system hundreds of years ago...and it failed throwing the whole country into a turmoil. It is only a matter of time before this happens again. | |
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| Don't throw away those pennies!
Posted: 5/30/2008 5:02:03 PM | I happened to have 8 pennies on my desk that I got from change when going to the store. Sure enough one of them was from 1980. I compared it to one from 2003 and it was indeed noticeable heavier.
Oddly, though one from 1984 was just as heavy as the one from 1980.
Did some pennies continue to use mostly copper even after 1982?
PhillyFellow | |
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| Don't throw away those pennies!
Posted: 5/31/2008 8:09:19 PM | | i heard awhile back that it costs 1 and a half cents to mak a penny and 7 cents to make a nickle. weather that is still true or not sure. i don't think the government uses pure copper to make pennines anymore. i have a 5 gallon water jug about half full of pennies and the last time i weighed it it weighed over 80 pounds. | |
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_JAFO_
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Joined: 11/9/2007
Msg: 12 | |
| Don't throw away those pennies!
Posted: 6/2/2008 12:39:37 PM | I just read that the House of Representatives voted to revive the steel penny this last mid May. Steel pennies they say, cost seven-tenths of a cent each to make, compared with 1.3 cents for each copper penny. The penny measure will now be taken up by the Senate.
It's called the `Cents and Sensibility Act' -- HR 4036 -- dated October 31, 2007 | |
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| Don't throw away those pennies!
Posted: 8/31/2008 2:18:16 PM | Two things to keep in mind:
I remember reading one time its not illegal for some reason in the US to destroy or wreck pennies, i have no clue why.
Another thing is that pennies and more so nickles get reused, so its not something made and destroyed, but rather an investment, if you can call it that, haha.
It would be a lot easier if in Canada, and the US the pennies were eliminated, and just round to the nickle. Ah well. | |
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| Don't throw away those pennies!
Posted: 8/31/2008 6:23:25 PM | | Man I hare pennies. The best thing the gov could do is tell everyone from now on they are worth ten cents. No more throw away for me! Until then they hit the trash can. Sorry to say it. | |
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| Don't throw away those pennies!
Posted: 9/1/2008 6:46:59 AM | Actually, the copper bullion value of pre-1982 copper pennies is currently 225% of face value, according to a recent quote of $7,500/ton on the London Metals Exchange. http://www.lme.co.uk/copper.asp
The value of the US dollar is in a freefall and there's no sign anything's going to change. | |
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| Don't throw away those pennies!
Posted: 9/1/2008 2:57:38 PM | | Hey Fred, instead of throwing the pennies away, send them to me!! My Dad used to save all his pennies and give them to me! I miss my Dad giving me tons of pennies. They would add up after awhile, and I could do something fun with the money! To me pennies aren't trash!! They add up, you know. | |
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| Don't throw away those pennies!
Posted: 9/1/2008 11:51:15 PM | You guys don't know what your'e talking about, just going around repeating what you hear everyone else say. Gee, what do I know about pennies? Not much.
The penny blank is manufactured out of alloy 8848, that is a nonferris cuper nickel alloy which has a lead content of about 6 percent. In short, it's brass. If any of you rocket scientist have found a way to seperate posit bonding, well the feds would like to have a word with you, So you can forget about melting coins down for the copper. besides, all you will get is a dirty hot zink****ail. Yum, The penny blank, itself comes from a roll bond, a bar is DC or Direct cooling casted and the bar is rolled out to the exact width of the coin. That roll in turn is run through a 100 ton minster where the coin blank is stamped out . You don't want to be anywhere near that minster without hearing protection, or you could loose a few years of high school . The blank is annealed in a Salem and Rockwell 2000 furnace, (a pizza oven on steroids), the blanks are droped onto the belt of a two chambered (what we called) the oven, if memory serves my correctly, you can cook a chicken in there in about 12 seconds, but it takes 20 minutes to cool. Anyway, the blanks are brought up to temp at about 1250 F and then "shocked" raised up to 1495 F and then dumped in to a quench tank at 38 to 42 F ,another loud proposition, striped in an acid bath of GBS (globular sodium bisulfate) and gum paste then rinsed in a water bath and diluted compound of qwerl 90. It then goes into a dryer and it is burnished in cobmeal, that's right chicken feed. Then into a shaker where any bent coin blanks are sorted out, and finally a bar gage to ensure proper weight and thickness. There are 142 pennies to a pound Please, go ahead weigh it out if you think Im full of crap. You probably got the time.
The product is rimmed in the same brass mill in a neighboring department, you know those cyclone donation collectors at the grocery store? Where you drop in a coin and it rolls around getting faster towards the bottom and ends up looking like a blur before it drops? Same principle. The blanks are then shipped off to West Point NY where the coin face is struck. From there, I don't know, doesn't matter. I had lunch with the engineer who managed the plant yesterday, so I had to ask him.
"Hey Dad, there's a guy on line named Phillis something who said they quit making pennies, should I get on Scottrade and sell short on my stock?"
When he finally quit laughing he said "You know if they did they forgot to tell me"
Then he mumbled something about the guy growing up under powerlines and not knowing bull$h!t from applebutter. I felt stupid just for asking, but I wanted to speak with the voice of legitimate authority, sometimes you have to let your conscience be your courage.
Okay, fair enough, but will they quit making them? Remember the Susan B. Anthony dollar? They quit making those right? Well, not really, now they're just called the 20 peso.
So why would the government maintain a contract on a coin that doesn't interface with any vending machine except maybe the Illinois tollway and a few outdated chicklett machines? Good question. Next time you're at Walmart take a look at a box of Winchester western ammunition, check out where they are made....East Alton, IL. You guessed it, the very same brass mill where the coin blanks are stamped. Instead of stamping banks, they draw cups into....bullet jackets. They finish out munitions at a different location in wadd operations. And they make a lot of them. In fact, their second largest customer is their closest competitor, Remmington, but their largest cunsumer of munitions is a little Mom & Pop operation called the Department of Defense. They also are the largest supplier of ordinance. So regardless of what you may think of the government, a smart bird don't poop in it's own nest. It may be that the penny is more vital to the interests of national security than we have considered. You would not want our brave men and women, our loved ones, put in harms way with nothing but empty rifles saying "bang bang you're dead" now do we?
Bottom line: will we still have pennies in the future? I don't know what people are writing in newsletters, or who's tea leaves says what, but when I drive past the mill and hear that 100 ton minster going off, I don't need a chrystal ball.....bet the farm on it. | |
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| Don't throw away those pennies!
Posted: 9/2/2008 7:25:22 AM | A friend of mine once said that if you threw a penny off the Empire State Bldg and it hit a person on the ground, it would kill them. My question is: if the penny is so cheap and useless, why did the USA use so many bombs in Iraq? Why didn't we just drop thousands of dollars worth of pennies? We could have done just as much damage and could have saved the billions it cost for the bombs, not to mention the trillions its costing US to rebuild the worthless place. | |
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| Don't throw away those pennies!
Posted: 9/3/2008 9:26:12 AM |
iamapialso
... if you threw a penny off the Empire State Bldg and it hit a person on the ground, it would kill them.
Very doubtful. The mass of a penny is only 2.5 grams (39 grains) and its terminal velocity* is no doubt less than half the speed of sound. (550 feet per second)
* the speed at which the force of gravity and the force of aerodynamic drag are equal & opposite, beyond which it does not accelerate any further. | |
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