Copper Pennies - The New Gold Rush?

This is a guide on how to hoard U.S. copper pennies and quickly turn them for a profit. U.S. pennies dated 1982 and earlier are nearly pure copper. Copper is a semi precious metal, and newer pennies are made mostly of worthless zinc because copper is too expensive. The current melt value of a copper penny today is nearly $0.03 which is 3X the face value! That means 1 copper penny is really worth 3 pennies in copper. This is where the guarantee part comes into play. You can purchase boxes of pennies at the bank for face value in boxes of $25. You can take those pennies home and cherry pick all the copper pennies (remember 1982 and earlier pennies are what you want. Some 1983 pennies are copper also, but some also are zinc). When you are done sorting the copper pennies from the zinc pennies you can then return all the zinc pennies to your bank account. Since you can always 'sell' back your box of $25.00 in pennies to the bank for the same $25.00 there is ZERO risk of losing money this way!

Please read on as I explain briefly how to do this easily.

The easiest way to obtain copper pennies is to go to the bank and purchase the pennies. Some banks you might have to order the pennies and pick them up a later day. Remember though, that you only have to pay $25 for $25 in pennies, so you won't be losing any money this way. I recommend getting up to 2 boxes of pennies ($50.00) at each bank. This is so you don't become a nuisance to the bank for grabbing all their pennies and leaving none for the merchants. I have worked at a bank before and can tell you that the banks will not care if you pick up $50 in pennies every few days. In fact the bank won't really even notice you for a while since they are used to giving out boxes of coins for merchants so often.

Sorting the copper pennies from the zinc pennies by hand will not be the quickest task, so there are several options available online for devices which automatically sort the pennies for you. These are electronic devices much like the coin ejectors inside vending machines which spit out 'bad' coins. You set up the electronic device to sort the copper pennies to one bin and the zinc to another. 

To the right you will see a few videos of these machines in action. They are much easier and faster than by hand. Even though they might cost a couple hundred dollars for a fully built penny sorter, they are worth their weight in gold in the long run. The electronic devices themselves can be obtained on ebay by searching for 'Copper Penny Sorter'. They cost between $30 and $40 on ebay, and are perfect for sorting the copper coins.

Ok, so now you have all the copper pennies sorted and you would like to make a profit now. You must have an ebay account in order to sell your copper pennies. The best way to sell the copper pennies are in either lots by the pound or by the thousands. So 5 pound to 10 pound lots work well, and then lots such as 3,500 or 5,000 pennies works well too. There is a legal limit of $100 you are allowed to sell in U.S. coins at a time. This is $100 face value. The most you can sell in one ebay lot is 10,000 pennies, but the 5,000 penny lots seem to do the best. You are also NOT allowed to legally melt the pennies down or sell them to a recycle center for scrap value. Selling the pennies on ebay in lots of $100 or less is perfectly legal. I have included some current ebay listings showing copper penny auctions going on right now. Look at the face value of the pennies then look at the asking price or current bids! Some of these auctions are doubling the face value of the pennies!

This means you can get $50 in pennies and turn around and sell them for $100! The best part is even if they don't sell you still have $50 in pennies you can take back to your bank. You lose nothing but the time you spent sorting the pennies!

Only in America could you make easy money this way, but don't delay. Get started before too many people catch on to this and grab up all the remaining copper pennies in circulation!