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Why would you melt them down? If they abolish pennies their collector value would probably be much more than 2 cents. Pennies from the 19th century can be wort

by dheera 5y ago

Why would you melt them down? If they abolish pennies their collector value would probably be much more than 2 cents. Pennies from the 19th century can be worth several dollars, a few specific ones even several hundred dollars.

iso1631 5y ago
If there's only a few then perhaps. There are how many billion 1 cent pieces? Going to take a long time to get some value out of them.
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bastawhiz 5y ago
The overwhelming majority of pennies are not rare, even if they were abolished. There would be many millions (billions?) of coins which aren't really good for much except the material they are made from. Even if you had the time to inspect every penny you planned to melt to see if it was worth something meaningful, the return you'd see would likely not even begin to cover the time you'd spent looking through all those pennies. Unless you had a machine (which costs money) a few hundred dollars is unlikely to make the effort profitable.
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- imglorp 5y ago
  About 300 billion were minted up to nowish.
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dfxm12 5y ago
OK. I'll sit on my pennies for a couple centuries until their value raises a couple dollars :) We can look at old, pre-Euro money like pfenning. What are the coins from the 90s worth today? I mean, sure, maybe a few extra bucks, but then you have to factor in some leg work of finding collectors who want what you have. It's not really a worthwhile for most as an investment. The scrap is easy to sell right now.
grkvlt 5y ago
taking a page from Carl Barks and Scrooge McDuck, the trick is to collect as many pennies as your can, melt down almost all of them and sell the remaining, now incredibly rare, few for a larger amount of money. see [0] for further details, including pitfalls of retaining only a single coin and the joys of pie fights. for reference (spoilers, but the story is from 1954, so...) the outcome of hoarding and destroying [dubious, discuss] all but one 1916 US quarter was to raise the price to one skyrillion [conversation to SI prefix uncertain] dollars, resulting in failure to realise the cash value of said asset. but, pie fight. 0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_Atlantis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_Atlantis
usefulcat 5y ago
I think you may be greatly underestimating just how many pennies are out there. I used to think bicentennial quarters might be worth more someday. But here we are nearly a half century later and AFAICT a standard (not silver) bicentennial quarter which has been in circulation is still worth pretty much exactly 25 cents. So in real terms, a lot less than in 1976. I guess the lesson is, if you're going to collect coins as an investment, don't bother unless they're either uncirculated or actually rare.

by dheera 5y ago

iso1631 5y ago

If there's only a few then perhaps. There are how many billion 1 cent pieces? Going to take a long time to get some value out of them.

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bastawhiz 5y ago

The overwhelming majority of pennies are not rare, even if they were abolished. There would be many millions (billions?) of coins which aren't really good for much except the material they are made from. Even if you had the time to inspect every penny you planned to melt to see if it was worth something meaningful, the return you'd see would likely not even begin to cover the time you'd spent looking through all those pennies. Unless you had a machine (which costs money) a few hundred dollars is unlikely to make the effort profitable.

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imglorp 5y ago
About 300 billion were minted up to nowish.

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dfxm12 5y ago

OK. I'll sit on my pennies for a couple centuries until their value raises a couple dollars :) We can look at old, pre-Euro money like pfenning. What are the coins from the 90s worth today? I mean, sure, maybe a few extra bucks, but then you have to factor in some leg work of finding collectors who want what you have. It's not really a worthwhile for most as an investment. The scrap is easy to sell right now.

grkvlt 5y ago

taking a page from Carl Barks and Scrooge McDuck, the trick is to collect as many pennies as your can, melt down almost all of them and sell the remaining, now incredibly rare, few for a larger amount of money. see [0] for further details, including pitfalls of retaining only a single coin and the joys of pie fights. for reference (spoilers, but the story is from 1954, so...) the outcome of hoarding and destroying [dubious, discuss] all but one 1916 US quarter was to raise the price to one skyrillion [conversation to SI prefix uncertain] dollars, resulting in failure to realise the cash value of said asset. but, pie fight. 0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_Atlantis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_Atlantis

usefulcat 5y ago

I think you may be greatly underestimating just how many pennies are out there. I used to think bicentennial quarters might be worth more someday. But here we are nearly a half century later and AFAICT a standard (not silver) bicentennial quarter which has been in circulation is still worth pretty much exactly 25 cents. So in real terms, a lot less than in 1976. I guess the lesson is, if you're going to collect coins as an investment, don't bother unless they're either uncirculated or actually rare.