At Least His House is Paid off but ...
A final mortgage payment made with 62,000 pennies by Thomas Daigle of Milford, Massachusetts sounds so for very quaint. Yet was that really a course of wisdom or was there perhaps a better way. Pennies of the vintage 1982 and older are worth more than a mere cent. Supposing that half of his pennies were the older ones that would come out to a total melt value of $69,706.60 There's your mortgage and then some. Keep the rest of the pennies for a rainy day.
Now it's true that actually melting the pennies for the copper is illegal but one can roll them and sell to collectors and that is what methinks would have been the wiser course. Also in the process one should look for the wheat pennies that are even more collectable. I also pick up pennies and then spend the newer less valuable ones and I keep the others as a fun small hobby type “investment”.
Nickels are 75% copper and 25% nickel and of late have been ranging in at par value. When melt value equals face value it's time to start keeping nickels aside and that time has come. There have been reports that the government wants to change the composition of the cent and nickel so they don't lose money when stamping them for distribution.
Agape, Daniel
Most of the time mints actually 'make' money on minting coins. see this quote from wiki: "With the mass production of currency, the production cost is weighed when minting coins. For example, it costs the United States Mint much less than 25 cents to make a quarter, and the difference in production cost and face value (called seigniorage) helps fund the minting body." Approximate Current Cost of minting Various U.S. Coin Penny - 1.26 cents, Nickel - 7.7 cents, Dime - 4 cent,Quarter - 10 cents; but that does not not mean that one make money melting them down for the metal because a large part of the cost is in production not raw material
ReplyDeleteThat's correct and using the key words "coin composition" in a google search one will learn that and much more. For one thing the government would like to change the composition of the nickel to lessen their cost of production. See the "COIN MODERNIZATION, OVERSIGHT, AND CONTINUITY ACT OF 2010"
ReplyDeleteThe "profit" margin will be slim for a hobby collector but I'm keeping every nickel I get my fingers on and ask to get them as change all the time now. It' fun to inform people that a nickel is worth a nickel or more but a dime is not worth a nickel.
A nickel is worth 5 cents+ once again, $0.0500348 is the melt value for the 1946-2012 nickel on September 09, 2012. Data is from http://www.coinflation.com/coins/1946-2007-Jefferson-Nickel-Value.html
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