A pre 1982 copper penny weighs 3.1 grams, thus a dollars worth (100) would weigh 310 grams it takes 453 grams to make a pound, thus we have 310/453=.684 pound of copper for a dollar's worth of pre 1982 pennies. If copper goes over $1.47 a pound the pennies are worth more as copper than coins. The price today 6/29/06 on Kitcometals was $3.34 a pound. That makes each penny worth about 2.2 cents.
http://www.kitcometals.com/charts/Copper.htmlNo wonder they started making them out of Zinc after 1982, and putting a thin copper plate on them.
The other interesting coin that is made of an expensive metal is the common 5 cent Nickel coin. It weighs 5 grams, thus a dollars worth is 100 grams. The coin is 75% copper and 25% nickel by weight. A pound of the coins should cost $4.53. The price of nickel metal is $10.01 a pound. Thus the metal value in the coins is $2.50 for the nickel content and $2.50 for the copper, a total of $5.00. The prices I gave are for new clean metal not scrap, but it's easy to see the value of the coins is more than their face value, and they will disappear from circulation, just like the old silver coins. It may be a safer investment than most things :-)
