The Mighty Penny

One of the last acts of the Roman Empire, not unlike those acts of the current United States, was to remove valuable metals from coinage. First we saw gold coins disappear. In 1965, we saw silver disappear. In 1983, we saw copper disappear. We now make coins out of essentially worthless zinc and reclaimed Buick parts.

The last two coins of value, where the melt price exceeds their face value, is the nickel and the penny. In 2006, Congress passed a law preventing you from melting your own money. So as JP Morgan has essentially cornered the copper market (which is not illegal) and the price is ramping up, your pre-1982  pennies are now worth nearly three times their face value. It presents an interesting argument. What is worth more? A dollar that has lost 97% of it's value, or a penny that has tripled in price? Note the value of ten dollars worth of old pennies in the box below...


Base Metal Coin Melt Value Calculation
Generated on December 22, 2010.

                
Values Used:
Total Face Value:$10.00
Coin Type:1909-1982 Lincoln Copper Cent
Copper Price:   $4.2541 / pound

Zinc Price:   $1.0495 / pound


Answer:

Total melt value is $28.07.

(exact value is $28.0691134406)

Comments

Anonymous said…
Cool! Now a penny for your thoughts is too much.

Cheers and Merry Christmas to you and yours.
December 23, 2010 at 8:06 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's Showtime Bitches!!- The Sunday Collage

Image
 Today, they convicted Former President Trump today on 34 counts of make believe bullshit fabricated from a 17 year old tryst with a porn star.  At it's very worst, Donald Trump may have gotten a piece of ass on the side. He may have used campaign funds to give Ms. Daniels 130,000 to shut up about it. He may have (gasp) lied. Let's conjure up some perspective. Of all the whores in the Whitehouse, JFK was probably the worst. Kennedy was a well documented sex addict. The "Stormy" of his day was a film star named Marilyn Monroe. Men (and women) have been screwing around on their spouses since time began. Millions upon millions and probably billions. Clinton paid Paula Jones 7 times what Daniels received. Where was the big witch trial then? So men like to get laid. Unscrupulous women provide vaginas. There is nothing proprietary there. No news flash.  The US government spends 100's of billions of dollars a year on welfare, wars, shitty student and housing loans, bond
Read more

Was It Worth the Trouble, Mr. Trump?

 Several years ago, as Ann Coulter (2016) was being laughed at for predicting the Trump presidential win, I was reading a piece about why working-class America was supporting a billionaire. It was a nasty piece, a hit job, explaining that poor, working class Americans were a bunch of dupes enamored by wealth and fame. Deplorables, according to Hillary. It was also total bullshit.  Over the years after Hillary Clinton, perhaps one of the most highly effective criminals in America lost her bid to become President, I came to understand the widespread appeal of Donald Trump. It wasn't polished bullshit, it wasn't party support, experience, or a career of broken political promises. It was something else entirely. Something that I treasured.  To be sure, I was not a Trump supporter back then. I am a strict adherent to George Carlin's political views in that we keep electing these rich assholes and nothing changes. So I skipped the voting process in 2016 for that reason and also t
Read more

First, We Abandoned Virtue- The Sunday Collage

This post was first published in September, 2014. Sorry for the delay today. Late night, didn't get home until 2 a.m. A couple of weeks ago, I was reading some interesting stuff about societies and how they eventually crumble and implode. More than a few people have postulated that the first things to go wanting are values, morals, and integrity. This was first proposed by Socrates and then expanded on by Plato as they spoke of virtue as moral excellence. How are people supposed to understand the importance of virtue if your society doesn't teach it and your leaders don't possess it? Not only do we lack any type of "leadership by example" but when was the last time you actually heard anyone, anywhere, describe a President or a  Congressman as honest?  If all you ever see is this current day "dog eat dog mentality" from your leaders doesn't that become the standard? If you look outside politics, you see greedy corporate pirates such as the Koch B
Read more