Loading ...Interesting. They left the pennies behind. Pre 1982 Pennies are 95% pure copper. 140 copper pennies will give you 1 pound of copper. $1.40/lb. for something worth $19. If you have them melted down. Cost to smelt them I don’t know. In 1982 it was costing the US Mint .12 cents each to make a penny.
Re Snops.com:
Zinc pennies today? ” By 2012, production costs had risen to 2.41¢ per penny.”
“The current price discrepancy between the value of the metals in the coins and the value of the coins themselves has sparked a growing cottage industry of melting down cents to harvest for resale the copper and zinc they contain. The U.S. government has countered both by restricting the export of pennies and by making it illegal to melt them down. Coin melters could spend up to five years in prison for their pains.”
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/making-cents/
The revamped $100 bill costs 12.5 cents to produce — a 60% increase over the 7.8 cents it cost to print the older version of the bill.Oct 9, 2013.
Comment: If it costs 12 cents each for paper money, the 2.4 cents for copper metal pennies has to be wrong. Probably 2.4 cents PLUS the metal costs.
Retail Copper price.