COIN COUNTER AT BANK SEPERATES COPPER PENNIES-- PIC ADDED

hello everyone.  just wanted to throw something out there.  i returned some of my coins to my bank using the coin counter.  when the reciept prints out it has two catagories for pennies.  old and new.  thought it was interesting.  seems like copper pennies are being pulled from circulation.

hello everyone.  just wanted to throw something out there.  i returned some of my coins to my bank using the coin counter.  when the reciept prints out it has two catagories for pennies.  old and new.  thought it was interesting.  seems like copper pennies are being pulled from circulation.

I checked a receipt from my last coin cash-out and it didn't show this.  Is yours a newer machine?

my bank is TFCU.  im pretty sure they are new machines but have no way to know how old for sure.  i didnt ask. 

I've had some coinstar machines do this too.

You have to wonder why.  Is the gov't trying to pull these out of circulation for the copper content?  If so, is Coinstar getting paid to help them do this?  Makes you think...

wow, very interesting!

Oh my oh my oh my.  Then it would make perfect sense that they recently passed the new 'no melting' laws.
Jimminy Christmas... if this is true, this would be like the gov'mint saying " There is money to be had... but just for us."

The US dollar is only worth what it will buy--- it has no other value.  Now, they are not even letting it be worth what it can buy- namely, more non- copper cents than what you had.

There is another forum that deals solely with hoarding copper pennies... some of them track their percentages and are already finding that there seems to be less and less pre 82s.  Yuk.

By the way, do you recall the ratio of new to old pennies on that receipt?

Thanks for the post.  It will encourage me to do some more research, and if verified, step up my sorting amount.

I'll bet the government is requesting that copper cents be returned, so they can melt them down.
Even more of a reason to start saving them.

That is very intersting.....okay, I am on the bandwagon.  Pre 82 pennies here I come....lol. 

Could you please post a pic or scan of the receipt?

The machine would need to have very precise sensors to differentiate between the types of cents.

And at only 2X face value it wouldn't be worth the shipping/handling/storage and smelting cost's yet.

If somehow it is true that the gov is actually trying to hoard cents NOW than it must mean that THEY KNOW scrap copper prices are going to go through the roof soon.

If they were actually calibrating the machines to separate the 2 types of cents wouldn't it be more lucrative to calibrate them to separate the SILVER coinage and put it in a separate bin inside the coinstar?

How big is this machine you went to,that it would have enough extra space to hold the copper cent's?Just curious.Thanks.

I'll bet the government is requesting that copper cents be returned, so they can melt them down.
Even more of a reason to start saving them.

You'd lose that bet. The 'Government' is not requesting copper cents be returned so they can melt them down  ;)

I'll bet the government is requesting that copper cents be returned, so they can melt them down.
Even more of a reason to start saving them.


You'd lose that bet. The 'Government' is not requesting copper cents be returned so they can melt them down 

I am not saying you are wrong or right, but general comments like that are pretty uninformative.  I would love to hear that this is not what they are doing.

But do you have reasons/proof/references? 

[hasn't]

I'll bet the government is requesting that copper cents be returned, so they can melt them down.
Even more of a reason to start saving them.


You'd lose that bet. The 'Government' is not requesting copper cents be returned so they can melt them down 

I am not saying you are wrong or right, but general comments like that are pretty uninformative.  I would love to hear that this is not what they are doing.

But do you have reasons/proof/references? 

Are we talking about the same Government that hasn't been pulling silver out of banks for the past thirty-something years now? Or is this some new Government that wants to pull copper cents and leave the silver floating around for the CRH's ?

yet.

If somehow it is true that the gov is actually trying to hoard cents NOW than it must mean that THEY KNOW scrap copper prices are going to go through the roof soon.

Or perhaps they KNOW that the value of the US dollar (and therefore penny) is going to tank, thus making the copper worth more by comparison. Silver may be harder to seperate, if the weight of the coins has not changed as much over the years.

Silver coins weren't worth twice face value until the 60's.  When they were, people started hoarding and most were taken out of circulation VERY quickly- There is also nothing to say that it wasn't government taking it out, also.

Now that silver is at $13 per ounce, supplying banks with machines that can be calibrated strictly enough to pull maybe one or two silver coins per $100 in halves is not going to be worth it.

But people are NOT, in general, saving their pre- 82's. But they are worth 2x face value.  30% or so of pennies are still copper, and there are MILLIONS of pounds of copper pennies out there.  Sure, it may be tough to make shipping and sending pennies profitable, but when you already have a fed shipping system to banks and such, you do not need to change much to get a bag or two per bank back to the fed.

Or could it be as simple as the government trying to avoid us from starting to hoard, due to the mere expense and difficulty of replacing the pennies with more pennies?

Please continue...

Good post Someguy... good point. I hope that you are wrong, though. That would mean bigger problems than the price of producing pennies.

Your sorting comment makes sense, though. A pre 82 penny weighs 3.1/ 3.2 grams, I think. A post 82 weighs 2.5/2.6.   That is a 15 - 20 % weight difference. Probably pretty easy to calibrate a machine to sort these.

You can guess what I am going to say next... whether it be a 90%er or 40%er, the weight PERCENTAGE difference is MUCH less.  Tougher to get a machine that precise, I would assume.

I just don't know of what the point would be to seperate the copper pennies from the other ones, if they weren't planning to do something with them.

sorry i dont have a copy of the reciept.  i turned it in to the cashier to get the money.  i will make a special trip to the bank in a couple of days to throw some modern and some pre 82 pennies in there.  ill get it up as soon as possible.  hopefully tomorrow

I think the ban on melting and exporting has a loophole for authorized persons. In other words I bet that Olin Brass can melt pre-82 pennies to make the blanks for the new pennies. Coinstar can still legally sell pre-82 pennies to authorized smelters for a profit I assume.

Or could it be as simple as the government trying to avoid us from starting to hoard, due to the mere expense and difficulty of replacing the pennies with more pennies?

This wouldn't work though. There is a bit of a paradox in hoarding pennies simply to avoid the hoarding of them. Sure, they could go for the melt value, but they would still have to deal with the replacement of those that they hoarded. If that was what they worried about at least.

Well, next year they are coming out with 4 new reverses, and a redesign for the penny altogether in 2009.
So maybe they are up to something. 

As within the last 20 years I have heard of legislation being proposed to do away with the penny.  Also to bump the value of all the pennies up to a nickel.  In that case I could see the Gov. doing that in a way to do away with them.  So if they got all the copper ones out now melted them passed that legislation so you can turn the remainder into a nickle they would probably end up ahead.   But then again with the silver issue I belive its the same thing.  Why didnt they pull them out earlier???  If the counting machines can tell the diffrence between a Canadian dime and a US dime im sure it could tell the diffrence between silver and clad.  

 If the counting machines can tell the diffrence between a Canadian dime and a US dime im sure it could tell the diffrence between silver and clad.  

You would think so.

What's the weight difference between a silver rosie VS a non silver?

As within the last 20 years I have heard of legislation being proposed to do away with the penny.    

I believe the cent will be around until at least 2009 as I believe I read that Congress has already passed a law about the redesign for the 100 year anniversary and I believe there are 4 designs that will be issued that year.  

Will the cent be made of the same material? Who knows, but it should be around for at least a couple more years in some form.


Note on the Canadian vs. US dime.  The machines pick out the Canadian dimes because they are magnetic, not by weight, of course this doesn't work with the silver Canadian dimes.

I used a coinstar machines today at my store,
and it didn't have 2 different pennies lines

Here's a link to someone who invented a high speed sorter.

http://www.ryedalecoin.com/index.html