Topic: Pre-1982 (copper) pennies. (Read 3371 times)

Bump. Someone should at least send me an offer. I can probably get pretty good deals on this sort of thing

The fact of the matter is it's going to cost hundreds of dollars per ounce. Sure, that's rational and business smart for gold/platinum/maybe even silver, but not copper. Copper is still under 1 dollar per ounce here.

Well, I still have 60 years of lifetime left, at least... I think it's plausible.

In the next five to ten years? The odds are zero, if not infinitesimally small.

I don't think much technology is needed to travel to an asteroid with a propulsion vehicle, attach it, and direct an asteroid to our moon to be mined. The time and money required, however, would be astronomical. (punny)
Time and money that no single corporation upstart could ever get, ever.

IANAL, but the reason that penny presses are allowed at major attractions is because of the word "fraudulently."

I highly doubt that they'll be mining copper from asteroids in our lifetimes.

I buy $100 boxes of nickels from time to time and stack them.. 

If I get enuf to buy a new car, I'll probably need 2 pickups to take them all to the dealership

Every time I feel the desire to buy some rare earth bullion, I realize that with all the news about mining asteroids, that at some point, we are probably going to do it, and when we do, all metals prices will go down. ESPECIALLY over-inflated precious metals, and not so especially ones with heavy industrial applications.

On a side note, what if everyone decided to cash out their savings into pennies at banks? Would that make copper pennies worth a sizable amount more than they are now, as scrap?

I still can't tell if I'm even contributing to this thread... 

Shameless bump.

None at all.

Bluefirecorp, any relation to BlueCorp/ReallBlue?

I sort faster than that by hand. I have a grams scale that I toss the penny on. It's already balanced out for a normal penny. So, if the weight is greater than say .20 grams, it's copper. Canadian pennies are around about .3-.4 while copper pennies are about .5 grams heavier. Only takes 2-3 seconds per penny for me to do it.

Again, that type of machine would put both CAD pennies and USA pennies in the same box/part...which is bad. My system allows me to sort all those out. I even can grab the wheat pennies. If someone wants to fund me with about 50 dollars or something, I can run to the bank today, grab a box of pennies and sort them all out (and record it).

https://store.usps.com/store/browse/uspsProductDetailMultiSkuDropDown.jsp?categoryNavIds=catGetMailingShippingSupplies%3asubcatMSS_B%3asubcatMSS_B_Free&categoryNav=false&navAction=push&navCount=31&productId=P_LARGE_FRB&categoryId=subcatMSS_B_Free

15 dollars to ship as many pennies as that box holds.

If you are paying 2 dollars per lbs of copper, and it's current value is 3 dollars, even with shipping charges, you are still making a bunch of money on the transaction.

Dude, check this out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC8ABm2Tz5c&feature=related
Doesn't look like to much effort to mock up with household materials.

Google's working on it, they said it'd be a couple of years though.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-24/google-chiefs-back-startup-mining-asteroids-for-metals.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57419801/asteroid-mining-venture-backed-by-james-cameron-google-ceo-larry-page/

None of this metal speculation/value will hold very well when we finally learn how to...

MINE ASTEROIDS.

It's not the copper content, it's the fact that if someone wants to take all my pennies across the border [you can carry 1 million pennies on you legally (~6300 lbs of copper)] and melt them down, they can't melt the CAD pennies. They can melt the American pennies for the copper content, but not the CAD pennies. Same in America, if you have a bunch of copper CAD pennies, you can melt them in America, but not American pennies.


(Text as of 2/19/02) 18 U.S.C. §331:
Whoever fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates, impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales or lightens any of the coins coined at the mints of the United States, or any foreign coins which are by law made current or are in actual use or circulation as money within the United States; or whoever fraudulently possesses, passes, utters, publishes, or sells, or attempts to pass, utter, publish, or sell, or brings into the United States, any such coin, knowing the same to be altered, defaced, mutilated, impaired, diminished, falsified, scaled or lightened - shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. (Emphasis added.)


It says bringing coins INTO the United State to be mutilated, not exporting them.
So, you can't bring me a ton of Canadian pennies

Since there's a weight difference, couldn't you just have a stream of air that will deflect the lighter ones further, and make them miss the collection container? Would just have to have them fall past the stream one at a time.

Don't forget to check for die errors when you're sorting

Im in Canada, and pennies up to '96 are 98% i think. Got boxes of it in my room.

50K - Meh - Legos ->

http://robosingularity.wordpress.com/2007/08/26/dannys-fully-automated-lego-rubiks-cube-solver/

Yes and no. Have to manually feed it..so a bit slow.

Also, it doesn't separate out CAD pennies..which would be illegal to melt down in Canada.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130479399867#ht_2015wt_1270

I wanted one as I have about $250 worth of pennies in my room. A tad expensive though.

Bump.

Another bump. It seems me selling 'new' type of products on bitcointalk is rather difficult.

When I mentioned $5000 dollars, I meant $5000 dollars in copper pennies [really, closer to 2 million pennies to get that, $20,000].

500 man-hours was an estimation, now I'm looking at closer 120 with a nice and proper machine.

Sure, but I was thinking of a multipurpose machine that could handle pennies, dimes, nickels, quarters, casascius coins, or whatever. It could sort by type, date, denomination, BTC balance, or what have you.

uh the copper pennies weigh more then the zinc ones..  You don't need any cameras.  A simple wheel that has spots for pennies to drop into one at a time while rotating and two output paths will do the trick..  Its already been done..

Here's a cheesy example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCk_wuxaEvs&feature=related

Actually, you could design and build an extremely capable sorter on the cheap. I would recommend a system that you can fill a hopper with coins, and then it spreads them on a slow and wide conveyor belt. Then, use an extremely high resolution camera and some custom image recognition software to sort them; for those that are showing tails, use a robotic arm to flip them over, and another camera to confirm the data from the first one and read the flipped coins. Finally, use a second robotic arm to pick coins and dump them into sorted moneybags.

The problems with this approach are twofold; you must create or buy the image recognition software, which would be extremely difficult, expensive, or both; and you must also be able to create robot arms that are extremely precise without being too expensive. I would estimate that a reputable robot builder such as GE/FANUC would want to charge you between $50k-$100k just to design and build the hardware (cost numbers extracted from my ass).

Another option would be a high-speed serial sorting system; this would mean that you would have to find out a way to feed coins into a slot one at a time very quickly, and again use extremely high speed cameras and image recognition software to read the dates and other properties of the coins. You would need a camera on either side of the slot, and some way of sorting the output. Output sorting could be achieved with a rotating arrangement of receiving funnels that each go to a different moneybag. Use your imagination.

$5000 and 500 hours??  to sort pennies.. Just about anything is better then spending that much on a penny sorter .  Last time I checked you could buy a sorter for like $100.  The hardest thing to do will be getting the pennies to feed the sorter..  You'll probably also need a rolling machine to reroll the pennies.

That's the long term plan. Actually designing a machine rather than buying one. The current machines on the market seem to require too much human interaction.


Right now, I'm trying to get the proof of concept DONE. I need to see there's area in the market for a new face rather than investing 5 grand into it and 500 man-hours just to find out "oh, no one actually buys the coins".

If your going to do 20k a day, buy the machine that sorts them..

The thread was a proof of concept. If I find a buyer that's actually interested in a lot of copper pennies or so, then I'd gladly search through 20k a day.

Even if someone just PMs me saying they are interested then it gives me a reason to go out and actually do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLSTXGmBaT4

Same idea but searching for silver dimes instead.

FTFY

You can cram $75+ of pennies into a medium flat rate box $11.35.

Not that its much of a problem for the most part, but melting pennies for their scrap value is illegal. The main problem is the cost, if you ship $50 worth of pennies, it will cost you $200 for shipping. Your 151 pennies, worth $3 approximately will cost at the very minimum $5 to ship.

Huh, I had a bucket of tantalum ore laying around somewhere. Shit was HEAVY. Might have gotten thrown out though.

Agreed, I sell pre 82 Canadian nickels sometimes in bulk (they are 99.99 pure nickel) but that's just because they are already sorted as part of another process. With metals prices down I just leave them there in the shop in boxes, I don't care.

Pennies for their copper... too many issues hording including weight and bulk. Not enough upside.

These pennies sell on ebay pretty readily.  Really it is not worth it to sort them and try to sell them, but you can on ebay.  The real boom in copper was last year when prices were about 30% higher then they are now.  1.5 to 2 cents each is about what you can get in BULK right now.  Pennies are sent in flat rate boxes to save money and if you do not have enough to fill one up then it becomes even more pointless. 

This is your problem..


I'll buy them for .02 each if you pay shipping.

Now if you were selling Tantalum, that would be a different story. Rare earths and cell phones go hand in hand literally.

I think it's just a space issue.  Sure copper has gone up in the last few years (as have most metals) but it would probably be easier storing silver and gold for density.  I probably have at least 300 pre-82s and several hundred "1/2 pennies".

Surprised nobody is selling Morgan dollars on here...

Surprised that no one has even sent me an offer.

Really now BTC forum? You deal in Gold, Silver, other materials *cough*virtual*cough*nuggets*cough*, but you won't touch cheap copper. 

Great, I live about 20 min away from Jacksonville.


Congratz, you have a dime worth of pennies


EDIT: I was actually kidding about living 20 min away from Jacksonville, just wanted to mess with him.


Pennies are still for sale.

Ha! Arkansas.

Location?

Sorry, pick up only

If you pay shipping, I'll take it!

I found a 1981 (heads up!) at an abandoned factory yesterday. Free to good home

Teach her how to daytrade! 

Yes way! However unless you are jobless or have absolutely no life and get really bored really fast it's not worth your time to sort them.

Trust me, after spending 2 hours sorting just finding 151 out of a ton of coins, it was just a pain.

She's not a people-person.
No driver's license either [in a town where that's required for any sort of job], and she refuses to get one.. so AT home jobs for her

Your fiance will make more per hour flipping burgers then sorting pennies

$0.02 each penny.

Shipping is free on any order over 2500 pennies.

Prices are negotiable.

I can get as many as you need within reason.

Larger orders may require down payments to make sure no one is trolling me. [I don't want to have $2,000 USD tied up in pennies for 3 months].