Question:
I just heard that copper is at $3.60/lb. I know that a penny has hardly any copper but are pennies worth more by weight than cash?
Answers:
Unfortunately, pennies are no longer made of copper -- they are made of zinc. Each penny contains less than a penny's worth of zinc -- about 0.9 cents worth.
Oddly, nickels are made of copper, and they contain about a a nickel's worth of copper.
Pennies are worth 4.5 cents in melted copper. It's a big problem, because people are trading in cash for pennies and taking them by the boatload to other countries to melt them down and sell them. It's illegal, but it's so profitable people are doing it anyway. Not long ago they confiscated a boat with over one million dollars worth of pennies. That's 4.5 million after melting them.
They say they are going to have to quit making pennies and raise the value of them to 5 cents to stop people from melting them. They aren't announcing when the change will be because they don't want people trading in to get a bunch of pennies so they can cash them in for 5 cents when they switch over. Big story, but the media isn't talking about it because that would make the problem worse. Trippy, ah?
Yes.
Mexican Cartels, Chinese Triads and the Italian Mafia have been buying and melting pennies for decades.
It's ilegal, of course.
No, since they are mostly zinc. They do however cost a cent in a half to make.
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