Posted on 12/04/2011 6:02:21 AM PST by blam
If Laws Change, 'Penny Hoarders' Could Cash In On Thousands Of Dollars
By NEAL KARLINSKY and MARY-ROSE ABRAHAM
ABC News – Fri, Dec 2, 2011
If Laws Change, 'Penny Hoarders' Could Cash in on Thousands of Dollars (ABC News … Joe Henry is on a first name basis with bank tellers across his hometown of Medford, Ore., scouring 15 banks a week with one thing on his mind: pennies.
Henry is often seen toting around bags of pennies, some he buys, others he changes back in for cash, which seems a little strange at first. He's not a collector, he is what's known as a "penny hoarder" and he is not alone.
Inside a shed next to his house, Henry has orange tubs filled with 200,000 pennies, and he spends hours sorting through roll after roll of the coins. But it's not just any and all pennies, Henry is only interested in those that are dated from 1982 and earlier because those are the coins made with 95 percent copper. A copper penny is worth more than other pennies -- now mostly made of zinc -- currently priced at $0.024.
"The copper has such a different sound than zinc pennies do," Henry said. "Real money has that definite sound of money and if you listen to a modern zinc penny, they don't sound the same, they sound sort of tinny."
Henry even has a $500 home counting machine to separate out the copper ones.
Much like the resurging obsession with gold, the price of copper has skyrocketed in recent years and the rising price has led to some unusual sprees. Thieves have been exploiting the value hidden in obscure items, stripping copper wiring from phone and utility cables, from construction
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
That is, four of the same old quarters or a hundred pennies will still buy a “new dollar.”It's just too expensive to convert to new coins, so often the old coins are retained.
You may wake up to the news that your $50,000 in the bank is now declared to be $5,000 “new dollars.” In that case, any coins you are holding are worth 10X more than the day before. Your paper money OTOH will have to be turned in at ten to one.
Will our debts also be converted to “new dollars”?
You mean ... I should keep my rolls of pennies?
Apparently rolls with pennies before 1982....
New dollars are just one stage during the destruction of the old and the conversion to the new economic system that will replace it.
How this will manifest in the end runs the spectrum from Mad Max (trading with bullets, often flying through the air) to a new gold standard to something like the old USSR, with an entirely new mandated currency enforced by law.
I think it’s wise to hedge in all directions. Food, ammo, gold, paper dollars at home, jars full of coins, all of it.
It’s too early to tell which will be your literal lifesaver. But one of them may be, if history is a guide.
The 1971 British currency conversion from sterling to decimal - should have been called “decimation” rather than ‘decimalization’.
I separate nickels from my spare change, they are worth more than a nickel already, although the price has recently gone down a bit. Its the safest investment anyone can make, because the price of the metal can go down, but if that happens, it will still never go below face value.
Yes, for sure. And nickels even more so; they will soon be replaced with zinc, just like modern pennies. Or perhaps aluminum, like in East Germany.
Well, that’s informative. Thanks.
For me, too.
I wasn’t so discriminating in the pennies I saved regarding weight and 1982.
“Fortunately” I haven’t rolled most yet, but now I have to sort through them again.
I had no idea this was going on...
Around here instead of hoarding pennies crooks are just stealing copper wire out of a/c units. A local church has been robbed twice of it’s copper wire.
a bit more “lucrative” than pennies. I’d presume that if a copper penny pre-1982 is 95% copper, a pre-1982 OR a post-1982 strand of copper wire is near 100% copper.
“...Maybe the cops need to do some kind of sting operation on the sleazy guy...”
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The TV guy could be a sting operation...
If I recall at one time in the recent past a nickel contain about 7 cents worth of the metal. I joked with friends that if you wanted to become a millionaire overnight just borrow three million dollars. Buy nickels with it. Sell the metal for 4.2 million. Pay back your loan and pocket a cool million plus. This plan is scalable. Melting US coins is against the law however so you’d have to invest in a smelting furnace before you could sell your “scrap”.
I got a couple hundred dollars of nickels ratholed along with a couple gallons of pocket change. I know that’s nickle and dime stuff but every little bit helps. As noted, they are always worth what I paid for them.
It’s time once again to trot out my currency and coinage reform proposal.
Given that there has been ample inflation on the order of 10 since the last change, and we have an excessive array of confusing coins and low-value currency, it is time for a practical simplification.
First, denominations need to proceed in a proportional way without large value ratios or crowded ratios. The classic 1-5-10-50-100... progression with ratios of 2.0-5.0 is ideal as a minimum, with denominations of 2, 20, etc. being optional for important valuations.
Second, we want to avoid coins of such low value that they are more trouble than they are worth. Economic waste occurs with the extra time wasted dealing with needlessly small coins. A dime is worth less than a minute of labor at minimum wages, and no currency transaction requires anything smaller than this denomination. The penny and the half-cent served well as the smallest denominations when their values were that of today’s dime. (Note to any economic imbeciles: electronic transactions are often conducted in smaller units than our smallest coin, and that cash registers have been “rounding” - without bias up or down - to the nearest small coin for sales tax purposes for generations. Google “sales tax rounding” if you have doubts and read a few articles).
Third, we want to set the coin/currency transition at a practical level that avoids our wallets being overstuffed with small bills, or our pockets with too many coins. Coins should be suitable for purchases like a magazine, a coffee, a lunch, or a brief cab ride.
Fourth, the ratio between the largest and smallest coin should be limited to a practical factor. Consider that the economy functions effectively with coins at 0.05, 0.10, and 0.25, with pennies treated as trash, and larger coins generally not used. That is a factor of 5 between the largest and smallest coin. A factor of 10-50 may be ideal, and a factor of 100 (as in actual current coinage) is excessive.
Fifth, we need bills of adequately high value for large cash purchases (consider the largest Euro note has a value of about 6.5 times that of the largest US note.)
Sixth, coins should be sized approximately proportional to their value for ease of recognition and use.
The proposal:
Coins:
$0.10 (slightly smaller than the current dime)
$0.50 (slightly smaller than the current nickel, larger than the penny)
$1.00 (slightly smaller than the current quarter dollar, larger than the nickel)
$5.00 (slightly smaller than the current half-dollar) Or it could be set at $2 to avoid overlap with a $5 note.
Currency Notes:
$5 (optional)
$10
$20 (optional)
$50
$100
$500
Our current 6 coins are replaced with 4.
Our current 7 notes are replaced with 4-6.
If you want to talk about making coins out of silver or gold, I’m even more enthusiastic:
$1000 gold coin (1 oz)
$500 gold coin (1/2 oz)
$100 gold coin (1/10 oz)
$20 silver coin (1 oz)
$10 silver coin (1/2 oz)
$2 silver coin (1/10 oz)
$1 copper or base metal coin (1/2 oz)
$0.50 copper or base metal coin (1/4 oz)
$0.10 copper or base metal coin (1/10 oz)
The TV guy does have a real scrap metal business and has for years but I guess he could be doing both, sting and real business.
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