What You Should Be Hoarding

For those of you who may just be getting started with your hoarding, this post will inform you of what coins you should be hoarding. For pennies, you should be keeping all of the pre-1982 cents. These cents are composed of 95% copper and 5% zinc. In 1982 the mint changed the composition to 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper. There were, however, copper cents minted in 1982. I would recommend that you save all 1982 cents and buy a scale as the copper cents weigh 3.11 grams and the zinc cents weigh 2.5 grams. Anything after 1982 you can roll back up and take back to the bank for money to buy more cents to sort through. You may also wish to save the zinc cents as well since the price of zinc seems to keep rising and the value of the metal content of the zinc cents seems to be getting close to the face value of the cent. I would recommend returning them for more cents to sort through for now though, there will be plenty of zinc cents around should the value of the metal content ever become greater than the face value of the coin.

It is also important that you sort out any wheat cent that you may find within your copper cents. The reason for this is the collector value of the wheat cent is much greater than the value of the metal content. Wheat cents are generally worth about 8-10 cents each, which is significantly more than the value of the metal content. I will explain about hoarding nickels in my next post.

running total: 2200 copper cents