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Copper Prices: Prospecting for pennies

Posted April 13, 2008

Baltimore — (TFN): A week ago or so, I listened to an NPR news story about metals “investors” filching through tons of pennies to locate those coins minted before 1982 that still have actual copper in them.

Indeed, copper prices have risen 30 percent since January. Prices for zinc are up 55 percent, to about $550 a tonne just in the last four weeks.

Smallcap Commodities Prospector Andrew Mickey predicted this move in his most recent appearance on Laura Cadden’s TFN Smart Trading Action Alert.

(Read his special report and accurate forecast right here.)

On April 11, the Financial Times followed up with a piece entitled: “High metal prices mean melting coins could start making cents,” arguing that it “could soon be worth Americans melting down their pennies for scrap, if zinc and copper prices continue their current rate of increase.”

Some politicians and armchair penny prospectors are beginning to lobby for the Lincoln penny to be scrapped altogether. Apparently, the prospect of hard money metalheads diving for pennies in mall fountains and convenience store change jars and shipping the melted metal to China were real enough for the U.S. Treasury to confirm some rules protecting the country’s mintage:

A year ago, on April 17, 2007, the United States Mint limited the exportation and melting of one-cent and nickel coins in a Final Rule to “safeguard against a potential shortage of these coins in circulation”. The regulation authorizes a fine of up to $10,000, and/or imprisonment of up to five years, or both, for violators.

There is no indication, however, that the fine would have to be paid in 1,000,000 pre-1980 copper pennies. Certified check or fiat paper currency might leave perpetrators still ahead of the game.


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Posted by J. Christoph Amberger · Filed Under Gold and Resources 

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