Should I buy copper pennies or copper nickels?

Copper pennies and nickels have a metal value that outweighs their face value due to their copper content. Yet, as any prudent investor knows, maximizing your return while minimizing cost and time is critical. The primary question remains, “Should I buy pennies or nickels?” Let’s take a look at some factors that need to be considered to answer this question.
 
 

Penny & Nickel Statistics

The Math

We can compare copper pennies and nickels using any of the figures above. First, lets consider the cost of the coin itself.

$1 of nickels means 20 coins. 20 coins X 3.75 grams copper per coin = 75 grams copper. 20 coins X 1.25 grams nickel per coin = 25 grams nickel.

Therefore, $1 of nickels, gives us a metal value of 75 grams copper and 25 grams nickel.

$1 of copper pennies means 100 coins. 100 coins X 2.9545 grams copper per coin = 295.45 grams copper.

100 coins X 0.1555 grams zinc per coin = 15.55 grams zinc.

Therefore, $1 of copper pennies, gives us a metal value of 295.45 grams copper and 15.55 grams zinc.

Here are the comparative results:
 

75 grams of copper versus 295.45 grams means that $1 of copper pennies is nearly 4 times more valuable than $1 of nickels (3.9393 times to be more precise). There is no doubt that $1 of pennies far outweighs the value of $1 of nickels in terms of copper value.

Sure, it may take a considerable amount more storage space to house the pennies over the nickels, but a better investment is well worth the space. However, unless you can go back in time when the only pennies you could get were copper pennies, the situation is more complex than the above math.

When you get pennies at a bank, they are mixed between copper pennies and zinc pennies. This means that you are getting a mix of pennies that greatly reduces your copper value in exchange for a lesser valued metal: zinc. You could sort pennies yourself to resolve this issue, but as the old adage goes, ‘time is money’, and your time may be better spent elsewhere.

We specialize in banking, monetary & economic systems, as well as engineering methods for industrial sized sorting techniques with the well researched sourcing to acquire pennies limited only to our requests. Therefore, we save you time by taking care of the sorting for you and provide as much as your investment needs require.

Your return as an investor already shows a clear profit margin buying below spot. In fact, let’s take a look at a real life scenario to show the value of copper pennies in the copper market.
 
 

Real Life and Copper Price

Sometimes number crunching is the best way to go. So let’s make some assumptions to get a bigger picture of actual pricing possibilities.

Let’s say copper trades at $4.00 per pound. As we know, $100 of copper pennies weighs approximately 68 pounds. $100 of nickels weighs approximately 22 pounds, however, only 75% of a nickel is copper, so the copper weight of $100 of nickels is really approximately 16.5 pounds.
 
 
 

Pennies vs Nickels Results

$100 in copper pennies have a 412% greater copper metal value than $100 in nickels.
 
 

And the Winner Is

What does this mean? As long as you are not spending more than 4.12 times the cost of a penny, or 4.12 cents per one copper penny cent, then it is worth paying extra for those copper pennies rather than buying up nickels. The winner by a margin of over 4 times the value: the copper penny.