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OT: Cashing in pennies

S

Stan in Oly, WA

Well-known Member
I have about 15 pounds of loose pennies. Google says pre-1982 pennies (95% copper) are 145 to the pound, and from 1982 on (97.5% zinc) they are 181 to the pound. Say I've got a mix that comes out 160 to the pound, then 15 pounds would be $24. Any suggestions about how to deal with them? The low payback defeats most ideas I can come up with.

Stan
 
Your bank doesn't have a coin counter? Even Wal-marts and such often have them nowadays, though some charge a fee, others only allow in-store gift cards, others are more interested in getting as much of your info as possible for future marketing/advertising, so you have to be a bit cautious. My credit union's coin machine is free to members and charges as couple percent (don't know offhand, as I'm a member and thus the number wasn't important to me to remember) for non-members to use. Dump 'em in, wait a few seconds, and get your $$ from the cashier.
 
I was traveling with my RV and had too much change. So I thought I would take it to a bank to cash it in. No go without an account. So I took it to Walmart. They had a machine but It took a % So I said what the heck....... I bought something and paid for it with coins. Took a while but I got my moneys worth.........LOL
 
Thanks, Tim. It's been years since I asked at my bank, and at that time they wouldn't do it for me. I'll ask around; I also belong to a credit union now.

Stan
 
Like said your bank should have a coin counter. My banks counter will count coins that are mixed dimes,nickels,quarter,and pennies.
 
I read a savings tip in the AARP magazine a couple of years ago. It said to save all of your change and any 5 dollar bills you get. I decided to try it and used a 2 1/2 gallon plastic water jug. It finally got full last week and I counted it up, it had just over $4000.00 in it. Almost paid my property taxes for the year. :-(
 
Canada here, we no longer use pennies ( round up or down ) I had a pile saved as well
bought some small mason jars & filled them up with pennies & gave them to the grand kids, who are all under 4 years old
they will grow up never having known what a penny was ? also have some old one & to dollars bills to give them some day, we don't have those in Canada anymore either
bob
 
Similar with 1 dollar bills. I have a stack of them, counted out piles of 5, put a paper clip on each pile and keep several in my billfold. When I pay for something I have a head start using them.
 
Right now it cost the tax payers more to make a penny than it is worth !
Don't know why people hoard them ? I wish they would round everything off and do away with change.
Maybe go pay your taxes or license plates with them or something ?
 
Wish I had $1200 in pennies this morning when I go to pay property taxes. It would be fun to see them have to count them.
Richard in NW SC
 
I have been saving my change for years in a jar. Then I went to a coin sorter. When one denomination gets full, I roll them and put 6them aside. Makes a GREAT "rainy day" fund.
One thing I do not like is banks (and others) charging a fee to accept or redeem change. Coins are legal tender currency, and should not be discounted in my opinion.
As for the pennies, I have a few things to offer...
Pennies were indeed mostly copper up to 1982. But, it was mid year that they switched over to the copper plated zinc ones. So 1982 pennies were made both as copper and plated zinc.
I personally do not want to see the penny eliminated. While it may seem like it isn't much, that "rounding" can add up to some big money for retailers. Any doubts, look back at one of the "Superman" movies that had Richard Pryor making some big money by diverting odd fractions of a cent into his personal account. As long as there are accounting numbers that are accurate to the penny, we need them.
 
We're such skinflints here in the USA that I doubt we'll ever see the penny go away. Rounding would never work because at least 50% of the time the business will come out ahead, and we can't let that happen.

Most people pay electronically anyway, so dealing with pennies really isn't that big of a deal. If people would quit hoarding them they wouldn't need to make more and they wouldn't "cost more to make htan what they're worth."
 
My Wife and I save our change in several large containers and when a Grandchild Graduates High School we give them a fancy jar full of change all gift wrapped and darn heavy. So far we have had 3 graduate and we are saving for 2 more of which one will be this year. We usually end up with between $250.00 and $300.00, not a bad graduation present and it's always fun to see the reaction from both the recipient and the others at the party. The last one will be in 2 yrs. then it will be about 7 yrs. for Great Grandkids we already have 2 Grand Daughters.
 
I have been rolling them in paper coin rolls and taking them to my bank, BOA and they accept them as I deposit them in my account. I don't make change at a store when I buy anymore. It is a lot easier to just give them paper and put the change in my pocket rather than fumbling around counting out change and them finding out I am a little short and having to give more paper anyway. When I get home I put the change in a can, and when the can is full I have a nice little "extra".
 
I don't keep change in my pocket so I put them in a jar and periodically take the papers I get from the bank, roll the coins and return to the bank. Reminds me of early days when dad was in business and at church when we rolled coins. I learned how to use 3 fingers to line them up and run em right into the sleeve...bang the ends shut and get to the next one.
 
I take ours in from our coke machine and the bank just counts it in a counter. This wasn't my regular bank for awhile, but glad I use them a little just for this! I'll also walk in with 100 dollar bills from the same machine after awhile. They like those. I don't think they like all the change though!
 
Check around some banks will take them because they have a counting machine. Or if you have a Wal-Mart like we do they have a machine that counts them and turns them into paper money. All my change other then quarters go into whiskey jugs and when full my wife rolls them up. The penny jug you have to be careful how you pick it up or the bottom can fall out due to weight. Guess how we found tha tout
 
My bank opens all paper rolls and send the coins through their own sorting machine to verify all coins are real. I quit rolling coins in paper, just bring them to the bank in a bulk container.

I can understand if banks and businesses charging a percentage to people who don't have accounts with them. Employee time and the machines are not free.
 
I don't keep any change other than quarters which I keep in a pill bottle in the car for a wash job. Anything else I tell the cashier to keep. I rarely pay cash for anything. I never eat in fast food places of any kind. Couple times a year ice cream cone at the Zesto.
 
(quoted from post at 11:17:26 01/11/17) I don't keep any change other than quarters which I keep in a pill bottle in the car for a wash job. Anything else I tell the cashier to keep. I rarely pay cash for anything. I never eat in fast food places of any kind. Couple times a year ice cream cone at the Zesto.
Click to expand...

So you like making trouble for the cashier?

Most cashiers will get in big trouble if they pocket the change, and if they put the change in the drawer, it doesn't balance at the end of their shift, so they're in big trouble then, too.
 
My wife and I rolled up a few hundred dollars worth of quarters and took them to our local bank to cash in. They had to unroll them and run them through their counting machine (bank policy). It was interesting, because we knew within reason how much money we brought in, and their tally missed ours by 25 cents. My point - call your bank before you go to the trouble of rolling them.

Now we just bag them up, uncounted, and take them in. The kids (tellers) seem to enjoy fooling with them.

By the way - to Stan - we've found that a gallon jug will hold about $50 in pennies.

When I was a kid with a paper route, the bank vise-president would make a big issue if I brought in 50 pennies un-rolled. He'd shove them back over the counter and send me back home with them. He was a real smart a$$ who openly hated kids. After a few displays of his joyful arrogance, I made a personal policy of bringing in exactly 49 pennies each Saturday morning. I thought surely his head was gonna explode as he counted up to, but not over, 49. I guess I was an ornery little cuss, but there's more to my experience with him.
 
Richard, we had a local gangster who was in the pinball/jukebox business. He had a property tax dispute that was not resolved to his satisfaction, so he waited until the last day, a few minutes before closing time, and brought in bags of dimes and nickels to pay the tax bill. The money taker refused to accept the bag of coins, which resulted in a shouting match, which got the sheriff involved, and eventually got a judge called down from his quarters upstairs in the courthouse. The judge said the coins were legal tender and they had to accept them. The tax guy said the bag might not contain the proper amount for the tax bill, and the judge said then count them. They counted them - for hours - while the gangster sat and smoked cigarettes and watched.

Same guy bought a new Ford from the local dealer and paid cash with bags of coins.
 
It's a locally owned small store in a small tow. I tip all the cashiers at Christmas and they are very pleased.
 
Most banks have a coin counter. If you're a regular customer, they have no problem with turning coins into either bills or a deposit.

I let all of my loose change accumulate. Pennies in one container and silver in another. I started the habit 'way back when, when I was in the Marine Corps. The laundry machines took dimes back in those days, and I got into the habit of putting all of the dimes in my loose change in a clean ash tray on a table next to my bunk so I'd have dimes for the laundry machines when I needed them.

Now, I have a metal bank shaped like a small mailbox that the silver goes into. Typically, it's about $130 worth when it's full. Pennies go into a container by themselves. Whenever I cash coins in, I take it in bills and put it into a Firearms Fund to finance firearm purchases.
 
I was in a similar place having accumulated pennies in a 10 gal glass carboy for years; close to 40 pounds. Short version is my local grocery has a "coinstar" change machine. It will convert mixed coins and issue store credits including Lowe's, Amazon and others. Charity can also be selected. Check their website and see if there is a kiosk near you.
 
There are people that go to the bank and get large amount of pennies and run them through some kind of machine that will separate the pre-1982 pennies. The plan is to save them until a time when the government does away with pennies and then sell them for the metal. I was a coin collector when I was a kid and I keep all the pre-1982 pennies to keep them away from these people. I got a 1959 penny today in change that looked almost unused.
 
Way back, when I was a kid, Dad was treasurer of the Sunday School of our church. Monday morning was a regular trip to the bank to deposit the offerings. One teller grumbled when he dumped the change out for her to count, so we spent some time Sunday afternoons sorting, counting, & wrapping the change. Then she grumbled that any dollar bills happened to be crumpled. So we smoothed them out & stapled each to a sheet of cardboard. That ended the grumbling.

In later years coffee at the restaurant was .48, + .02 tax, =.50 total. When opening in the morning the owner put $50.00, assorted coins & bills, in the register for making change. One of the local "High Rollers" would stop in for coffee every morning. Then when checking out tell waitress "Gee, only have a $100.00 bill, catch you tomorrow". Sometimes waitress would dip into her tips to make the day's total match. Owner caught on, so next day he was running the register. "High Roller" tried the same stunt. owner handed him a bag containing 9950 loose pennies, said "Here's your change". Solved the problem.

Willie
 
Hello Stan in Oly WA

Have not read the replies. But I would think a close look at the pennies may reveal a valuable One?

Guido.
 
You are correct but the government keeps talking about doing away with pennies. At that time these people hope it would be legal to turn in pennies for salvage metal. I'm inclined to believe the government would take in the pennies and melt them down themselves.
 
Thanks for the information and for the interesting stories. For anybody holding pennies against the possibility of the government abandoning them and allowing citizens to sell them for scrap, right now it looks like that would only be a way to lose money. The spot metal scrap price of zinc currently is around $1.25 per pound. Since post 1982 pennies are 181 to the pound, this would represent around a 30% loss even if it were possible to get that price. But spot metal prices are available only to those dealing in quantities of thousands of pounds. Look up the spot metal price of any common metal, then call a scrap metals dealer and see how close to that price you could get when buying or selling a small amount.

The value of pre 1982 pennies is harder to determine because it's unclear what scrap metal they represent. The addition of 5% zinc to the copper makes it either very low zinc brass, or it might be considered contaminated copper. The spot price of pure copper is around $2.60 per pound, so you might get a good price for them if you had a few tons to sell. The scrap price of brass increases as the zinc content decreases, but it tops out at around $1.75 per pound for brass that is 15% zinc. Whether it would continue to increase as the zinc content went down is an issue that would be between you and your scrap dealer.

Stan
 
(quoted from post at 09:10:01 01/12/17) The only pennies I hang on to are the wheat pennies.
Click to expand...

What about the old silver colored pennies, zink? It's been awhile sence I've seen one.

Dusty
 
Most pennies struck in 1943 were made of zinc coated steel. One of those in good condition today is worth about 50 cents. A non-counterfeit 1943 copper penny in good condition is worth more. They have sold from around $50,000 to over $1 million.

Stan
 
I take mine to Scott Credit Union and pour them into the machine in the lobby. It spits out a receipt and I take it to the clerk. If you're a member it's free. Non-members it cost a precentage. My bowl I keep my pennies in holds about 1600 pennies. Yes the payback is small but worth every penny in my book. I work in maintenance for our local Laundry Service. I find lots of coins. Last year I found almost $50 in pennies. With all the other coins and some paper money I found in the driers added up to $1114.00 in a 12 month period. It was fun coming home with my pocket full of change, I would count it and enter it into a spreadsheat on my laptop. I had it formulated to add every entry. It was surprising. My pocket gets kind of big with anything over $8.00 worth of change in it. Today I came home with $16.XX. That was 4 days worth of change buildup in 2 dryers. It falls into the lint vents and once a week the vents have to be cleaned of lint. Some of the coins fall out on the floor while the machine is operating. I've come to learn. It all comes out in the laundry.
 
Stan buy your self one of those home coin counting machines. When you come home throw the coins in it. They sort count and roll them. You can keep them or take them in. Mine worked good but was death on batteries. Like any thing there is good ones and cheap ones!!
 
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