Hoarding Copper Pennies for Eventual Resale

http://abcn.ws/uPKl7T (article is just a transcript of what is said in the video at the top of the page)

Have any of you ever considered doing this? I just started earlier this week with a batch of $40.00 in pennies. Of those, just under $7.00 were of the <= 1981 and 95% copper variety. Right now the price of copper makes these worth a little over 2x face value. On eBay there are quite a few auctions going, with the pennies going for anywhere from 1.3-1.7x face value.

Right now I am hand sorting, but I plan to purchase a Ryedale Penny Sorter in the near future in order to greatly increase my volume and hopefully make some money.

I have no illusion that I will become rich off of this scheme, but if I can make back enough to pay for the sorter and then continue to earn a little bit of profit, I'll be happy. Any little bit helps I guess. :-)

sends2aaron wrote:http://abcn.ws/uPKl7T (article is just a transcript of what is said in the video at the top of the page)

Have any of you ever considered doing this? I just started earlier this week with a batch of $40.00 in pennies. Of those, just under $7.00 were of the <= 1981 and 95% copper variety. Right now the price of copper makes these worth a little over 2x face value. On eBay there are quite a few auctions going, with the pennies going for anywhere from 1.3-1.7x face value.

Right now I am hand sorting, but I plan to purchase a Ryedale Penny Sorter in the near future in order to greatly increase my volume and hopefully make some money.

I have no illusion that I will become rich off of this scheme, but if I can make back enough to pay for the sorter and then continue to earn a little bit of profit, I'll be happy. Any little bit helps I guess. :-)

Honestly not a terrible idea, really.
Just better check some of those coppers make sure you don't come across any that are worth even MORE to a collector.

Bad idea. It is illegal to melt them down. Even if the penny gets eliminated the law may not change on this since the government may want to recapture all that metal for themselves. You will be sitting on that money I figure for a minimum of 2 years. In the meantime you could be earning interest on it or otherwise investing it. The only people that are going to make money off this scheme are the manufactures of said coin sorters.

But Aaron himself would not be melting them down. Just selling them to people who apparently want to do just that. Let them pay extra for pennies, and let them worry about the legality. It isn't illegal to sell pennies. Even for more than their face value, if someone wants to pay it.

Besides, honestly I think the government has bigger fish to fry than a few people buying up and melting down pennies, really. then again, sometimes they DO go after the small fish...either because they can't catch the big fish...or just to make an example out of someone.

All the same, it is not Aaron who is melting the pennies, he's just selling them.

I mean...no one's gonna make a million dollars doing that, but, hey, if it gets you a few tanks of gas, what the hey, right? I mean, this economy sucks, might as well make money any way you can!

Kalisiin wrote:But Aaron himself would not be melting them down. Just selling them to people who apparently want to do just that. Let them pay extra for pennies, and let them worry about the legality. It isn't illegal to sell pennies. Even for more than their face value, if someone wants to pay it.

Besides, honestly I think the government has bigger fish to fry than a few people buying up and melting down pennies, really. then again, sometimes they DO go after the small fish...either because they can't catch the big fish...or just to make an example out of someone.

All the same, it is not Aaron who is melting the pennies, he's just selling them.

I mean...no one's gonna make a million dollars doing that, but, hey, if it gets you a few tanks of gas, what the hey, right? I mean, this economy sucks, might as well make money any way you can!

The shipping and ebay fees has got to kill any profit not to mention Paypal fees. it is really hard to make any money on ebay nowadays they got you losing money at every turn. I knew ebay buying Paypal was a bad idea instead of lowering fees they increased them. greed just total greed.

Matt_How wrote:The shipping and ebay fees has got to kill any profit not to mention Paypal fees. it is really hard to make any money on ebay nowadays they got you losing money at every turn. I knew ebay buying Paypal was a bad idea instead of lowering fees they increased them. greed just total greed.

You expect anything else from Corporate America?

Kalisiin wrote:

Matt_How wrote:The shipping and ebay fees has got to kill any profit not to mention Paypal fees. it is really hard to make any money on ebay nowadays they got you losing money at every turn. I knew ebay buying Paypal was a bad idea instead of lowering fees they increased them. greed just total greed.

You expect anything else from Corporate America?

pfff no. Ebay just really irritates me how they do business sometimes though. they started out as such a great company giving more of the profit to the sellers now you can't even take payment by mail everything has to go through Paypal who gets a cut on top of Ebay fees That on top of postage, and your time to sell. I still use the site but don't like it near as much as when it was smaller.

Matt_How wrote:

Kalisiin wrote:

Matt_How wrote:The shipping and ebay fees has got to kill any profit not to mention Paypal fees. it is really hard to make any money on ebay nowadays they got you losing money at every turn. I knew ebay buying Paypal was a bad idea instead of lowering fees they increased them. greed just total greed.

You expect anything else from Corporate America?

pfff no. Ebay just really irritates me how they do business sometimes though. they started out as such a great company giving more of the profit to the sellers now you can't even take payment by mail everything has to go through Paypal who gets a cut on top of Ebay fees That on top of postage, and your time to sell. I still use the site but don't like it near as much as when it was smaller.

I agree with you. BUT...you can always set shipping/handling prices on top of you item in order to offset the fees.

Example, if it costs you actually 2 dollars to ship...and the ebay fees are 2 dollars and the PayPal fee is a dollar...you can tack 5 dollars on your item as shipping/handling fees, thus offsetting the five dollars in fees. Yeah, it kinda sucks when you are the buyer, and you think you got an item for 40 bucks and you end up having to pay 45...but listings are usually pretty clear that the bid does not include shipping/handling...and what those fees are..so you have a way to know.

On the other hand, I wish ebay would do better to protect buyers...once, my attention was alerted to a listing for a computer. The listing said.."What you are bidding on is a picture of my computer, not the actual computer" But suppose someone hadn't read carefully, and believed they were bidding on the computer...then won it for, say 500 bucks. ebay would have enforced the sale and the buyer would have been screwed.

Matt_How wrote:The shipping and ebay fees has got to kill any profit not to mention Paypal fees. it is really hard to make any money on ebay nowadays they got you losing money at every turn. I knew ebay buying Paypal was a bad idea instead of lowering fees they increased them. greed just total greed.

Just a thought on the eBay fees - since I know ahead of time what the approximate sale price will be, why not just pass that fee on to the customer in the form of a "handling" charge? I don't think there's anything unfair about that.

sends2aaron wrote:

Matt_How wrote:The shipping and ebay fees has got to kill any profit not to mention Paypal fees. it is really hard to make any money on ebay nowadays they got you losing money at every turn. I knew ebay buying Paypal was a bad idea instead of lowering fees they increased them. greed just total greed.

Just a thought on the eBay fees - since I know ahead of time what the approximate sale price will be, why not just pass that fee on to the customer in the form of a "handling" charge? I don't think there's anything unfair about that.

Exactly what I said, above.

Kalisiin wrote:

sends2aaron wrote:

Matt_How wrote:The shipping and ebay fees has got to kill any profit not to mention Paypal fees. it is really hard to make any money on ebay nowadays they got you losing money at every turn. I knew ebay buying Paypal was a bad idea instead of lowering fees they increased them. greed just total greed.

Just a thought on the eBay fees - since I know ahead of time what the approximate sale price will be, why not just pass that fee on to the customer in the form of a "handling" charge? I don't think there's anything unfair about that.

Exactly what I said, above.

Whoops, I missed that part!

sends2aaron wrote:

Kalisiin wrote:

sends2aaron wrote:

Matt_How wrote:The shipping and ebay fees has got to kill any profit not to mention Paypal fees. it is really hard to make any money on ebay nowadays they got you losing money at every turn. I knew ebay buying Paypal was a bad idea instead of lowering fees they increased them. greed just total greed.

Just a thought on the eBay fees - since I know ahead of time what the approximate sale price will be, why not just pass that fee on to the customer in the form of a "handling" charge? I don't think there's anything unfair about that.

Exactly what I said, above.

Whoops, I missed that part!

No biggie...I am rather wordy, it's sometimes easy to miss a small part of what I say in the sea of words...