Keep an Eye on Nickel

One thing that I like to do every once and a while along with my copper hoarding is pick up a few rolls of nickels and keep just for speculation purposes. Right now the Jefferson Nickel is worth 5.5 cents or just over half a cent more than its face value. The best thing about hoarding nickels is the only sorting you have to do is if you are searching for old dates or wartime nickels. Other than that, the composition of the nickel is still the original 25% nickel 75% copper that it has been for years. This also makes nickels a good investment when planning on a copper price increase. I would encourage you to pick up a few rolls every now and then and just keep them in a safe place for now. I believe it is a good bet that the nickel will follow the same trend as the pre 1982 copper cent sooner rather than later. Besides, what do you have to lose? The worst that can happen is you have the exact same amount of money that you put into the investment.

Finding Greater Copper Percentages

Though the numbers still seem to hover around 25% copper for sort percentages, there are some places you can look to find some higher copper percentages in your sorts. If you can aquire customer wrapped rolls, or CWR's from your local bank there is a better chance of a higher copper percentage. In these hard times, people are rolling up their coin collections and sending them to the bank. Though it is sad that it has come to this, it does present a unique advantage for those with a little extra capital to invest in copper. I actually found an entire roll of 1943 steel cents from a CWR. Also, ask around. I am sure some of you have a friend who has been keeping their pennies in some sort of jar for no real reason for the past few years. The closer you get to the bottom of this jar, the higher the percentage of copper you will find. Offer to go through the jar and replace what you take with a few extra cents, trust me, it's worth it. The bottom line is, be creative, you can really increase your sort percentages and save time while building your hoard at a much faster pace. Right now time is completely priceless commodity.

Hoarding Growing in Popularity

Copper hoarding has been steadily growing in popularity over the past few years. This last year has shown an explosion in the number of small time copper hoarders. This is definately no reason for panic as there are plenty of copper cents still in circulation but it does show a trend similar to that of the wheat cent. Ironically enough, this is comming at a time when we are changing the image on the reverse of the penny. Those of us who are hoarding copper cents now have a unique advantage of building a collection of these coins when there are still many in circulation to choose from. Look at how often you find a wheat cent in circulation. I believe this will be the fate of the pre-1981 cent within the next 10-15 years. I believe the copper cent with disappear from circulation much quicker than the wheat cent did due the the abundance of copper hoarders we have today. On that same note, even the most common wheat cents will go for 4 to 5 times face value in poor condition. I believe that the copper cent will only have a collectors value of 2-3 times it's face value due to the flooding of the market in a decade or so. That said, we should not have to worry about that as the price of copper will put the metal content value of these coins far above face value by that time.