For the Penny searchers Why? How Profitable are the Pennys?

[Darth Walker]

I can not imagine my self doing Penny's so the question is why many of you search for Penny's?

Unless you find that 1955 DDO or the 1943 Bronze is it wort it?

Darth Walker

 

[n8dagr8345]

I am not a penny guy either, BUT my speculation is they do it for the hunt and the collector aspect, not the fiscal ones....
N8

 

[maine_Jim]

There is a profit to be made selling copper cents. It is not huge but in quantity you can make some money. If you have had 50 or so straight skunk boxes of halves then getting 25% copper cents out of a box isn't bad. Here is an auction that someone got $75 for a $50 bag of copper cents.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/50-FACE-VAL...837?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19cbe9878d

Toss in the wheat cents that are found searching and it can be worth it. Of course if you happen to have a connection where they will buy your copper as junk copper then that might be another incentive...

Maine_Jim

 

[Zephr]

Sure, you can make some profit with pennies, but most of us just do it for our collections.

 

[SFBayArea]

There is a profit to be made selling copper cents. It is not huge but in quantity you can make some money. If you have had 50 or so straight skunk boxes of halves then getting 25% copper cents out of a box isn't bad. Here is an auction that someone got $75 for a $50 bag of copper cents.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/50-FACE-VAL...837?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19cbe9878d

Toss in the wheat cents that are found searching and it can be worth it. Of course if you happen to have a connection where they will buy your copper as junk copper then that might be another incentive...

Maine_Jim

At this point it's only fun to search for old wheats. Copper can bring money but not much. You're getting 1.4 or 1.5 x face for copper. Sure you can sell $50 face for $75 but after Feebay Fees, you're only going to make $12 on it. That's a lot of work for $12. However if the melt ban goes away or copper prices skyrocket, all gloves will be off.

I do like to search penny boxes on occasion since s-mint wheats are common here like silver is common in the North East. Anytime, I find a 10-20's S-mint wheat, I get excited. Hopefully, one day I'll find a 69-S doubled die. That's pretty much the only good thing about searching penny boxes here.

Oh, I do like to pay with Zincolns to places I owe money that I don't like such as medical bills.

 

[BuffaloBoy]

I do it for the collector aspect. I love getting older pennies, wheats are always fun to get. Okay, they're worth 3 cents, still... I love searching pennies.

 

[CardsNCoins]

I do not sell my copper cents. I sort them out because I feel like I'm in on the ground floor of something big. Imagine searching boxes of dimes, quarters and halves in early sixties if you knew they were going to be doing away with silver in coins eventually. Silver coins were only worth a little more than their melt value at that time, just as copper is now.

Do I think a copper cent will ever be worth 21X it's face value like silver currently is? No, but I think one day it could be worth 5X to 10X it's face value, and that is enough of a return on investment for me to keep socking them away.

I currently have $1,300+ in face value of copper cents. In a bank that $1,300+ would earn next to nothing, so having it out of the bank is not crippling me. Some people do not have enough spare cash to tie up in copper cents, and I get that, but if you do, why not be in on something before 99% of the rest of the world?

 

[Yinzi50]

There is a profit to be made selling copper cents. It is not huge but in quantity you can make some money. If you have had 50 or so straight skunk boxes of halves then getting 25% copper cents out of a box isn't bad. Here is an auction that someone got $75 for a $50 bag of copper cents.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/50-FACE-VAL...837?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19cbe9878d

Toss in the wheat cents that are found searching and it can be worth it. Of course if you happen to have a connection where they will buy your copper as junk copper then that might be another incentive...

Maine_Jim

At this point it's only fun to search for old wheats. Copper can bring money but not much. You're getting 1.4 or 1.5 x face for copper. Sure you can sell $50 face for $75 but after Feebay Fees, you're only going to make $12 on it. That's a lot of work for $12. However if the melt ban goes away or copper prices skyrocket, all gloves will be off.

I do like to search penny boxes on occasion since s-mint wheats are common here like silver is common in the North East. Anytime, I find a 10-20's S-mint wheat, I get excited. Hopefully, one day I'll find a 69-S doubled die. That's pretty much the only good thing about searching penny boxes here.

Oh, I do like to pay with Zincolns to places I owe money that I don't like such as medical bills.

It is hard for me to find s-mint wheat penny, I wish I could search boxes from your area.

 

[Diver_Down]

I relate the story of another CRH'er who searched Cents. He was a bit compulsive by sorting the copper memorials by date in rolls. He had lost interest with a lack of a market for his copper cents (this was the late 90's), and he was going to turn them into the bank. His one friend also collected coins so he asked him if he had any interest in any of the rolls. His friend had asked for specific date rolls and this piqued the hoarder's interest as to why. He began his research and discovered a very rare 1969-S doubled die. He ended up selling the particular discovery for 6 figures. At the time, his was one of the highest graded of this variety.

It is every hunter's dream. It has been an inspiration knowing that he pulled the cent from circulation.

 

[JimDon]

After a few skunks it is nice to find something old. Just pulled an 1897 Indian out of only my third indian box I've searched. I find it plain fun.

 

[SFBayArea]

I relate the story of another CRH'er who searched Cents. He was a bit compulsive by sorting the copper memorials by date in rolls. He had lost interest with a lack of a market for his copper cents (this was the late 90's), and he was going to turn them into the bank. His one friend also collected coins so he asked him if he had any interest in any of the rolls. His friend had asked for specific date rolls and this piqued the hoarder's interest as to why. He began his research and discovered a very rare 1969-S doubled die. He ended up selling the particular discovery for 6 figures. At the time, his was one of the highest graded of this variety.

It is every hunter's dream. It has been an inspiration knowing that he pulled the cent from circulation.

What's interesting is that most rare error/doubled die variety coins are pulled from circulation. That's what makes them harder to get. Even if you look at NIFC halves, they have low mintages yet they are not in demand as are some previous issue BU halves made for circulation with higher mintages. If you have say a BU roll of 1986 Kennedy halves, that's worth more than a BU roll of NIFC halves despite higher mintages. The issue is that the NIFC's are easier to get. Anyone can order them from the mint rather than waiting for someone to get a box of them somewhere and sell them.

 

[SFBayArea]

At this point it's only fun to search for old wheats. Copper can bring money but not much. You're getting 1.4 or 1.5 x face for copper. Sure you can sell $50 face for $75 but after Feebay Fees, you're only going to make $12 on it. That's a lot of work for $12. However if the melt ban goes away or copper prices skyrocket, all gloves will be off.

I do like to search penny boxes on occasion since s-mint wheats are common here like silver is common in the North East. Anytime, I find a 10-20's S-mint wheat, I get excited. Hopefully, one day I'll find a 69-S doubled die. That's pretty much the only good thing about searching penny boxes here.

Oh, I do like to pay with Zincolns to places I owe money that I don't like such as medical bills.

It is hard for me to find s-mint wheat penny, I wish I could search boxes from your area.

Forgot where you lived but if you are in the North East Tri-State area, I would gladly switch for CRHing purposes only. LOL. Getting silver is much more profitable than getting S-mint pennies. LOL

My best S-mint wheat cent found to date is a 1912-S in EF condition.

 

[goldencoin]

Here's what I've gotten through CRH
Wheats

Date None D S
1909VDB
1909 3
1910 5
1911 7
1912
1913 3 1
1914 4
1915 1
1916 4 2
1917 15 3 1
1918 13 1 1
1919 19 4 8
191- 1 2
1920 20 1
1921 3 2
1922
1923 6
1924 4
1925 15 2 1
1926 6 2
1927 14 3
1928 12 5 1
1929 12 1 3
192- 1
1930 14 3 2
1931 2
1932 1
1933 1 1
1934 24 3
1935 33 5 2
1936 34 2 1
1937 33 6 2
1938 12 1
1939 35 2 3
1940 145 12 13
1941 212 18 6
1942 173 41 7
1943 15 1
1944 396 129 40
1945 314 51 18
1946 316 104 37
1947 34 75 20
1948 74 62 11
1949 53 55 6
1950 91 174 14
1951 51 259 15
1952 36 352 25
1953 57 338 34
1954 5 143 9
1955 72 309 2
1956 92 503
1957 34 491
1958 92 313

Indians

1891 1
1895 2
1899 1
1900 2
1901 1
1902 1
1904 1
1907 3

And 1858 Flying Eagle cent

HH
-GC

 

[AGCoinHunter]

Many of us do it for future profit. The money isn't there right now for me but the potential for profit in the future is pretty good. Yes, I understand the time value of money and how you can invest it somewhere else and possibly get a better return but here is my logic. You invest a CU cent coin for 1/100Th of fiat. Currently with base metal prices its value is a gain of 100%. Can I sell it for that now, no. Maybe 1.5x right now. But since its always (baring any devaluation of our money at which point CU cents will all be going into the melting pot) worth a cent I am storing value there while my fiat continues to degrade. Eventually in the distant future the melt ban will be overturned and I will be able to get that value out of the cents I have collected. Remember silver started out like this also. While base metals might not perform as it has, there will be value there in the future.

 

[Dodeskaden]

I hunt pennies regularly, but only because I like finding wheats and rescuing that occasional pre-1980 BU cent that somehow kepts nearly its full mint luster through the decades. I do it solely as a pastime to unwind because I like coins; these pennies are scarcely worth anything over face and probably won't be in my lifetime (looking purely at the copper value doesn't really appeal to me -- I don't like the idea of melting coins, and I wouldn't stockpile them en masse hoping for a return on their copper value). I've never found an Indian Head, Flying Eagle, '55 DDO (or even a '43 steel, which kind of baffles me), and I don't anticipate ever having any profit from penny hunts; I just find something nice about finding an XF+ wheat or having BU rolls of cents. Someone might offer to pay me a buck or three for these rolls some day, but calling that profit--after the time and effort it took find and assemble them from circulation--would be crazy.

I personally think that looking at CRH solely as a way to make money is a little daffy -- there are about a thousand ways to earn more money in less time, and for less effort, if supplementing your income was the primary motivation. I think you gotta love coins.

 

[fistfulladirt]

Where do you guys find all of those British pennies?

 

[AGBlex]

who searches cents... jeez


i search 15-20 boxes a week.. i havent starterd collecting copper but i definatly do find some neat things. i've kept all my canadians. all wheats.. all indian heads and foreigns...

i will find a 14 D or a 22 plain by the end of 2012 but thats just a small goal

 

[usandthem]

There are speculaters out there right now that will pay 2X face. Find one and sell your pennies and buy silver with the proceeds. That's what I do.

 

[SFBayArea]

There are speculaters out there right now that will pay 2X face. Find one and sell your pennies and buy silver with the proceeds. That's what I do.

Why would they buy 2XFace when they can buy off Feebay for 1.4 or 1.5XFace?

 

[Bigheed]

they are supporting local business :-D