It is not illegal to value pennies at $1.50 for numismatic purposes and encourage collectors to trade them at a different value than face. Just like $2 bills, you can go to the bank and get them for $2, and try to eBay older ones for more. However, the fact that there are metal price charts on the site and essays extolling the value of copper, and misguided predictions that it will be legal to melt the coins for copper puts the website in a harder to defend position of encouraging acquisition of coins as bullion. The law I quoted specifically made one cent and five cent coins illegal to smelt or treat, so the quarter coin example is not a good analogy.
The trade of copper pennies (inside the US) as "bullion" is not illegal, it is a descriptive term not a definition. The definition of bullion is:
1. gold or silver considered in mass rather than in value.
2. gold or silver in the form of bars or ingots.
3. Also called bullion fringe, a thick trimming of cord covered with gold or silver thread, for decorating uniforms.
4. embroidery or lace worked with gold wire or gold or silver cords.
You don't need to melt the coins into bigger block in order to use them as an investment. The purpose of investing in copper coins is in hopes that one day you will be able to melt them as you can silver coins. Silver coins were at one point protected by the mint (they must be the fourth branch of government) but now they are melted in hoards.
The authority granted to the Secretary by the Coinage Act of 1965 has been invoked on two prior occasions; in both instances the regulations were implemented as interim rules that were later made permanent until rescinded. In 1967, during the transition from silver to cupro-nickel clad coinage, then-Secretary Fowler authorized regulations that prohibited the exportation, melting, or treatment of all U.S. coins containing silver. 32 FR 7496 (May 20, 1967). In 1974, to stem the unprecedented increase in demand for one-cent coins attributable to speculation that the metal content of the coin would soon exceed its face value, then-Secretary Shultz invoked this authority, approving regulations that limited the exportation, melting, or treatment of one-cent coins. 39 FR 13881 (April 18, 1974). These prior regulations were rescinded in 1969 and 1978, respectively, when the prohibitions were no longer necessary to protect the Nation's coinage. 34 FR 7704 (May 15, 1969); 43 FR 24691 (June 7, 1978).
There is the possibility that you may never be able to melt copper coins, luckily you can still spend the coins. Over the last decade congress has considered no longer minting pennies due to their increasing cost to mint and low economic value. If this were to happen the ban on melting them may be lifted and the value would quickly rise on all pre-1982 pennies.
