Copper, Nickel, Zinc, CuNi.

[Frugi]

For anyone interested www.coinflation.com is a great site for determining "melt" value of current circulating US coins.

Did I say current? Thats right.

Apparently, pre1982 lincoln memorial cents melt at $0.02 apiece. These pennies consisted mainly of 95% copper. There currently are many scrapyards in the US that are actively buying these at $2.40 (average) a pound which consists of about 155 sorted pennies. Most yards take no less than 50 lbs. at one time.

This to me alone seems like cents are/will be mass hoarded sooner than later, probably in the next couple of years. Maybe when the new lincoln cent designs come out.

However, the newest occurence is zinc topping $1.85 a pound -this means now even the regular zinc cents "melt" at over face ($0.0104) and as I write this now zinc has increased in value www.kitcometals.com .

This site also states the value of our circulating Jefferson nickels at around $0.07 and this has been a recent occurence so I'm pretty sure you'll probably start seeing these disapear also. Although it is tuffer to sell them at scrapyards because they are not truly nickel they are actually CuNi which consists of 25% nickel and 75% copper and most yards pay less for CuNi than for straight nickel or copper since it is a mixed metal it is harder to recycle because the metal must be seperated during smelting which increases cost. Also mixed metals coins are most often considered contaminated when it comes to the nickel content so really it would be better to hoard nickels for their copper valu rather than their nickel value sinc it is only 25%.

As for all the rest of the circulating coins their "melt" value IS much lower than their face so no concern there.

One more thing to be noted-

Canadian pre1981 nickels are .999 nickel and are worth about $0.20 each for there metal "melt" value. Keep your canadian nickels.

Canadian pre1996 cents are .980 copper and are worth more by the pound than our cents, since our pre82's are only .950 copper.

I hope everyone gives a second thought to saving all your nickels and cents because some day you might not be able to get them. I know there has been billions of pennies made but it wont matter if copper and zinc keep rising- Our pennies will be exported to China by the ton. Private companies will be doing this, overseas companies also, and also probably our own government will be melting coins. They will disappear, except for what has been hoarded.

Good Luck.

[cladking]

There will be so many hoarded that common dates can never have much numismatic premium. This isn't to say that people shouldn't keep them or sell them merely that the vast majority are not worth the effort for future numismatic value. When these are "all" melted there will be 100,000,000,000 unacounted for. Most are ones that were lost over the years or destroyed by other means but there will be billions that were intentionally saved or were saved because they weren't worth the effort to lug to the bank.

[eagames]

Yep it would take a miracle to extinct the hoards of common dates.

Still if the prices get high enough it will coax a lot of those penny jars into the melting pot and along with them will go the varieties that were not picked.

A few things to think of are that zinc cents do not stay nice unless they are safe in tubes. They will not be digging up collectable zinc cents like they do copper ones.

I remember not long ago those 1964 silver coins seemed to be in endless supply but now they get decent prices for BU 1964 silver because so much of it got melted. Same with wheat-cents and indian-cents that seemed in endless supply.

So might as well save some nice rolls of memorials.