Did the Topic catch your attention?
I figured I would share a little FACT with those that may not know or may not of noticed.
In 1982 the U.S. Mint quit making pennies out of copper. The pennies since then are made of copper clad zinc.
Most pennies made in 1982 are copper as that was the change over year and the Mint used up what copper blanks they had on hand.
The way that you tell which 1982 pennies are copper and which are zinc is to weigh them. A copper penny will weigh about 3 grams while a copper clad zinc penny will weigh 2.5 - 2.6 grams.
There about 151 copper pennies in a pound. If copper price is about $3.00 per pound that makes a copper penny worth 2 cents or so.
I have been saving pennies for many years as I have always liked them.
In the last year I have searched through about $2000.00 worth of circulated pennies that I get from my bank and a couple other banks when they have a surplus. The banks I deal with let me know when they have surplus and some times when they are short on pennies they will contact me and see if I have sorted zinc pennies for them, but that doesn't happen often.
I have found that about 25 to 50 percent of the pennies I sort through are copper.
In about the last year I have found one Indian head penny, over 600 wheat back pennies, a very hard to get Panama Canal Zone penny, a couple German 2 Pfennig coins, 3 penny sized silver foreign coins and 5 U.S. "dirty dimes" with 2 of them being silver. I have found that some of the coin sorting/counting machines will put dimes that are very dirty in with the pennies as the machine is fooled by the thickness and will put them with the pennies when mixed change is put through the machine.
Just thought I would share one of my little hobbies with you;-)
