This triggered a thought which led me to doing a quick calculation that I haven't done in years...
So, modern pennies are just copped plated zinc. But up to 1982 (barring some small interruptions like the 1943 steel penny) they were 95% copper. There was roughly 2.95 grams of copper in each penny.
Current copper prices seems to be approximately $12.31/kg or $0.0123/gram. That is about $0.036 per pre-1982 penny. Round down to 3 cents/penny to account for recycling costs. If you took all pre-1982 copper pennies you could out of circulation yourself you could make a 3x return!
(I have no idea how many pre-1982 pennies are still in circulation and it seems like this isn't public knowledge. Something tells me this endeavour to recycle them, as an individual, would never be fruitful. Also... my memory is that there is some question of legality in destroying currency en masse...)
philipkglass · 1d ago
The metal content value of nickels surged past the face value in 2006, so the law was updated to prevent this very idea:
Pursuant to this authority, the Secretary of the Treasury has determined that, to protect the coinage of the United States, it is necessary to generally prohibit the exportation, melting, or treatment of 5-cent and one-cent coins minted and issued by the United States. The Secretary has made this determination because the values of the metal contents of 5-cent and one-cent coins are in excess of their respective face values, raising the likelihood that these coins will be the subject of recycling and speculation.
hulitu · 1d ago
Just what i thought: money is really not sustainable. One cannot recycle or wash money. /s
Neywiny · 1d ago
I recall there being people who hoard buckets of copper pennies for this exact purpose. You can't melt them down unless it's for an educational purpose, so they have buckets and buckets waiting for the law to "change" (pun intended).
kelseyfrog · 1d ago
> You can't melt them down
Sure you can, you just have to find an unscrupulous copper merchant to sell it to. Not a difficult task - they've been around for thousands of years.
I'd expected older sites elsewhere, but apparently parts of that complex predate copper workings elsewhere (and the Bronze Age (copper and tin metalworking)).
rufus_foreman · 1d ago
>> You can't melt them down unless it's for an educational purpose
To educate people about the strength and resiliency of markets.
hedora · 1d ago
People have been doing this for years, and poisoning themselves with the resulting vapors. Either copper pennies or old nickels contain mercury if I remember correctly.
jamesfinlayson · 1d ago
Really? I've seen manganese mentioned as a trace element in some coins but not mercury.
tonyedgecombe · 1d ago
That reminds me of British Telecom which is worth less than the value of the copper they own in the ground.
I believe plenty of people already do hoard pre-1982 pennies for this exact reason.
And the laws only apply within the country (although bulk exportation is generally illegal). In Australia in the 1920s and 1930s there was a bit of illegal exporting of silver coins to South-East Asia due to the high silver content.
fuzzfactor · 1d ago
The right thing to do was maintain the value of the dollar, and therefore the 95% copper penny.
After that ball was dropped, eventually the penny was debased by 1982, ushering in the modern era where all copper wiring and plumbing is increasingly subject to destructive theft like never before.
vel0city · 1d ago
What's the energy cost of melting that penny? 1.5¢? That'll eat into your profits.
mk_stjames · 1d ago
Energy to change copper from room temp solid into liquid is the specific heat of 0.385 Joules/gram * about 1100C + the heat of fusion of 210 Joules/gram, so, about 630 J/g which is 0.170 watt-hours per gram.
A melt of 1,000,000 pennies would be about 3000kg, so 510 kWhr of energy, and using an electric furnace that is about 50% efficient at putting its heat into the melt, that is about 1000 kWhr at the wall outlet. I've been in foundries with crucibles that could do probably about 200kg copper pours, with a furnace power of about 100kW, you'd do a full crucible melt every few hours, and you'd run this continuously until you're out.
If you live somewhere with electricity, say, $0.15/kWhr energy, that is a melt cost of $150.
1,000,000 pennies at 3 cents per worth of copper would be about $30,000 in copper reclaimed over the course of a few days.
So, it would be absolutely profitable in large quantities, assuming you ... already work in a foundry.
The 12 1/2 cent coin suggestion is brilliant and deserves more discussion, so I'm bringing it back up here.
For those who don't know, the US Dollar was based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_real which was often broken into eight pieces to make change (hence, "pieces of eight" and "two bits"). Might as well bring it back while inflation lets us be nostalgic.
bryanlarsen · 1d ago
From Canadian experience, this is one of those things where the opponents of the change are much louder, appearing much more numerous than they actually are. In the end this was a widely popular move.
monsieurgaufre · 1d ago
I agree. From what i’ve seen, people use debit/credit cards / their phone, so the rounding doesn’t even occur.
alberth · 1d ago
That might be true for middle & upper class, in a developed country.
Thanks for confirming that less than 100% = “not everyone”.
ruralfam · 1d ago
While visiting New Zealand in the 90's I had my first encounter with no pennies. Everything was rounded up/down. Was an initial shock that came to make tons of cents (intended). Glad the US is doing this.
FireBeyond · 1d ago
If it's like Australia, it's not that everything is rounded up/down, it's the TOTAL.
Although when Australia introduced it, a number of retailers got fined for rounding everything up, or for rounding every individual item.
And only for cash. For card, it was still the exact amount.
dataflow · 1d ago
Why is this controversial? To me it makes perfect cents.
aspenmayer · 1d ago
Alas, some have more dollars than cents.
somanyphotons · 1d ago
I wish they would get rid of all coins - just issue smaller denomination notes if you really must have them.
fred_is_fred · 1d ago
Let's do nickels and dimes too.
bediger4000 · 1d ago
I'm not against the end result, but I was taught that we lived in a Republic, not a dictatorship. This should have been done legislatively, not by executive fiat.
Diti · 1d ago
If the USA was a dictatorship, I don’t think you would be able to criticize your government on the internet.
voxl · 1d ago
At what point in the rise of Hitler do you think people stopped posting anonymous criticism about Hitler? Because I'm going to bet never.
Diti · 23h ago
I didn’t know there was internet censorship at Hitler’s time, preventing people from talking about the dictatorship. Can you back it up with a source? I think you might have to use a LLM to find one.
It isn't dictatorship, but it is turning into dictatorless dystopia
tomcam · 1d ago
Interestingly, it's actually being done properly:
* The US constitution has an executive branch consisting of a single person, the President. (The other two branches are judicial and legislative)
* That person is given broad authority that includes the treasury, commanding the military, pardoning power, appointing a cabinet, etc.
* Delegating this is well within the power of the executive
That said we're allowed to complain about these things and a big enough protest could have the desired effect. I love pennies myself, but I'm not interested enough to leave my Go compiler long enough to do so.
Amezarak · 1d ago
Did Congress mandate the production of the penny? Or was the authority over what coins are produced (and how many of them) given to the Treasury?
bediger4000 · 1d ago
I think that's a bit beside the point. We all use physical money. An executive that respected the vox populi would leave this for the legislature, where everybody has elected representatives that can debate, wheel-and-deal, and act on that voice of the people.
There's an awful lot you can do, but shouldn't.
Amezarak · 1d ago
The President is also an elected representative. This isn't beside the point: if it's not legislatively mandated, this is American democracy working as designed.
If the voice of the people is the concern, there should just be a referendum. I for one would vote to save the penny.
lp0_on_fire · 1d ago
As I understand it congress mandates which coins _can_ be minted and their specifications (denomination/physical size/markings/etc) then leaves it up to the Secretary of the Treasury to determine how many need to be produced to meet demand.
dlcarrier · 1d ago
Great, now we just need to discontinue the dime, and make dime-sized nickels, or discontinue the nickel and quarter and bring back the half dollar, and we'll have a sensible coin system. When we discontinued the half penny, it was worth far more than a dime is now.
So, modern pennies are just copped plated zinc. But up to 1982 (barring some small interruptions like the 1943 steel penny) they were 95% copper. There was roughly 2.95 grams of copper in each penny.
Current copper prices seems to be approximately $12.31/kg or $0.0123/gram. That is about $0.036 per pre-1982 penny. Round down to 3 cents/penny to account for recycling costs. If you took all pre-1982 copper pennies you could out of circulation yourself you could make a 3x return!
(I have no idea how many pre-1982 pennies are still in circulation and it seems like this isn't public knowledge. Something tells me this endeavour to recycle them, as an individual, would never be fruitful. Also... my memory is that there is some question of legality in destroying currency en masse...)
https://www.usmint.gov/news/press-releases/20061214-united-s...
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2007/04/16/E7-7088...
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-31/subtitle-B/chapter-I/p...
Pursuant to this authority, the Secretary of the Treasury has determined that, to protect the coinage of the United States, it is necessary to generally prohibit the exportation, melting, or treatment of 5-cent and one-cent coins minted and issued by the United States. The Secretary has made this determination because the values of the metal contents of 5-cent and one-cent coins are in excess of their respective face values, raising the likelihood that these coins will be the subject of recycling and speculation.
Sure you can, you just have to find an unscrupulous copper merchant to sell it to. Not a difficult task - they've been around for thousands of years.
I'd expected older sites elsewhere, but apparently parts of that complex predate copper workings elsewhere (and the Bronze Age (copper and tin metalworking)).
To educate people about the strength and resiliency of markets.
https://www.theregister.com/2011/09/22/bt_copper_cable_theft...
And the laws only apply within the country (although bulk exportation is generally illegal). In Australia in the 1920s and 1930s there was a bit of illegal exporting of silver coins to South-East Asia due to the high silver content.
After that ball was dropped, eventually the penny was debased by 1982, ushering in the modern era where all copper wiring and plumbing is increasingly subject to destructive theft like never before.
A melt of 1,000,000 pennies would be about 3000kg, so 510 kWhr of energy, and using an electric furnace that is about 50% efficient at putting its heat into the melt, that is about 1000 kWhr at the wall outlet. I've been in foundries with crucibles that could do probably about 200kg copper pours, with a furnace power of about 100kW, you'd do a full crucible melt every few hours, and you'd run this continuously until you're out.
If you live somewhere with electricity, say, $0.15/kWhr energy, that is a melt cost of $150.
1,000,000 pennies at 3 cents per worth of copper would be about $30,000 in copper reclaimed over the course of a few days.
So, it would be absolutely profitable in large quantities, assuming you ... already work in a foundry.
For those who don't know, the US Dollar was based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_real which was often broken into eight pieces to make change (hence, "pieces of eight" and "two bits"). Might as well bring it back while inflation lets us be nostalgic.
Not everyone though is that fortunate.
~50% in India: https://www.pymnts.com/mobile-wallets/2023/cash-not-king-in-...
~60% in Brazil: https://www.pymnts.com/mobile/2025/payment-glitches-stall-br...
Similar trends in Africa, though exact numbers were harder to find: https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/27913/africa-the-unlike...
Although when Australia introduced it, a number of retailers got fined for rounding everything up, or for rounding every individual item.
And only for cash. For card, it was still the exact amount.
As for my claim (that people in a dictactorship wouldn’t be able to use the internet), here’s an example of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Ara...
* The US constitution has an executive branch consisting of a single person, the President. (The other two branches are judicial and legislative)
* That person is given broad authority that includes the treasury, commanding the military, pardoning power, appointing a cabinet, etc.
* Delegating this is well within the power of the executive
That said we're allowed to complain about these things and a big enough protest could have the desired effect. I love pennies myself, but I'm not interested enough to leave my Go compiler long enough to do so.
There's an awful lot you can do, but shouldn't.
If the voice of the people is the concern, there should just be a referendum. I for one would vote to save the penny.