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It is strange how relaxing hand sorting is. Kinda like fishing, I guess. Good chance to be alone with your thoughts, drink a beer or two, and hope you catch a big one (1909 S VDB). Think I'll stop by the bank tomorrow and see if they're feeling generous with their pennies...

I just don't have the space or patience for the copper cents. I sort pennies for Wheaties and return everything else :0) I prefer silver.

I started out sorting coppers till my next payday in '07, then I got my first box of halves. By '08 I was sorting 42 boxes a week + whatever else I could scrounge. 2008-2010 I got just under 1000 oz/ year. By 2011 the free silvers were gone from halves but the addiction was still there so I switched to dimes with the same vengeance and in 3 years I scalped over 3000 of the little slivers. Now those are mostly gone as well (last try was 10 boxes/ 1 sliver) and now I been sorting nicks for over a year. Guess when the nicks are gone I may have to do cents again unless I find a life ha. BTW the copper hoard went back to the bank somewhere along the way.
HH all, Mark

NEVER!

A few thoughts here...

If you own a Ryedale, you probably need to find at least enough copper to pay for the machine.

If you see someone selling a barely used Ryedale for only $100, you buy it, and then someone else shows up selling one for only $50, that might be a sign that we are near the end with copper.

I like to think about it this way. If I had $600 of copper like mentioned above and it went up 500-1000%, would that change my lifestyle or allow me to retire? Not even close! That would only be a few thousand dollars. If you had, say, $200k in silver and it went up 500-1000%, then I think you'd have a situation where a lot more people who would start thinking about retirement. That would be more like $1-2 million.

I agree with one of the other posters in that one whiff of the U.S. Mint deciding to stop making pennies, and the lines will be long at the banks. If you see a sign at the banks saying "Out of pennies!", that will be a sad day.

Recyclersteve wrote:A few thoughts here...

If you had, say, $200k in silver and it went up 500-1000%, then I think you'd have a situation where a lot more people who would start thinking about retirement. That would be more like $1-2 million.

If you had $200,000 in Silver and it goes up 500-1000%, don't let your neighbors know or THEY'LL be thinking about retirement!
And you're right, that would be a sad day!

ME Co. wrote:I started out sorting coppers till my next payday in '07, then I got my first box of halves. By '08 I was sorting 42 boxes a week + whatever else I could scrounge. 2008-2010 I got just under 1000 oz/ year. By 2011 the free silvers were gone from halves but the addiction was still there so I switched to dimes with the same vengeance and in 3 years I scalped over 3000 of the little slivers. Now those are mostly gone as well (last try was 10 boxes/ 1 sliver) and now I been sorting nicks for over a year. Guess when the nicks are gone I may have to do cents again unless I find a life ha. BTW the copper hoard went back to the bank somewhere along the way.
HH all, Mark

Wait a minute? Don't I/we know you? Weren't you here before?

Deal

Thanks for the replies. Since I started this thread I've added a couple more boxes to my copper stash. Further, I have amassed a total of 1,500 wheat back pennies. I usually find maybe 10 - 12 per box (I gone through what I consider to be a lot of boxes). In addition I became a another year older but my debt is staying as low as possible (contrary to the song).

I've stopped putting the copper into rolls but the same plastic baggies that I get my meds in. I think that that should be safe.

I sort by hand, and am beginning to wonder if I've missed some golden opportunities with my hand searching, but I'm doing the best that I know how to do. At this point I really don't want to go back and resort all those rolls by date.

Any ideas?

This thread started out with the figure of $600. It is interesting that that's roughly the cost of a Ryedale sorter. So if you had one and found $600 in copper, you could say the machine has paid for itself.

Rodebaugh wrote:

robroy wrote:I have been roll searching for a few years now and have begun to wonder at what point are people saying enough is enough and stop looking for copper.

I am not reselling (yet), and currently am not thinking about stopping searching. But I do wonder at what point would you stop looking for copper. I'm looking for a face dollar amount that people think is enough to store. I currently have over $600 plus a few folders and albums and am beginning to wonder if I have an obsession.

When it becomes a chore.
When storage becomes an issue.
When the fish are biting.

Best overall answer...

i have several+ tons of copper cents in a safe, easily accessible, not in the way storage. So, that leaves me in a position where it is out of sight out of mind. However, in the past couple of years I have amassed quite a bit more that wont fit into the storage area, and instead has found its way into jars, buckets, bags, boxes and whatever I can stick them in that are definitely in the way. Out of laziness this stuff is sitting around in my daily lived in areas, and not stored out of the way.

To answer when enough is enough, I would say when it gets to the point that you have no room to store a sheet of paper anywhere, that is when you probably have enough pennies and nickels.

frugi wrote:To answer when enough is enough, I would say when it gets to the point that you have no room to store a sheet of paper anywhere, that is when you probably have enough pennies and nickels.

Now that seems to be quite an imposing problem when someone can't even store a piece of paper. I am nowhere near that situation yet. Probably will never be, but it sure would be fun to attempt to reach that status. In the meantime, all my future findings will be placed into a 55 gallon metal drum. When that fills up I'll have to fine another. In the meantime, because I'm retired the problem of disposing of the coins will fall onto my children.

It's going to be sort of Dad's revenge.

robroy wrote:

frugi wrote:To answer when enough is enough, I would say when it gets to the point that you have no room to store a sheet of paper anywhere, that is when you probably have enough pennies and nickels.

Now that seems to be quite an imposing problem when someone can't even store a piece of paper. I am nowhere near that situation yet. Probably will never be, but it sure would be fun to attempt to reach that status. In the meantime, all my future findings will be placed into a 55 gallon metal drum. When that fills up I'll have to fine another. In the meantime, because I'm retired the problem of disposing of the coins will fall onto my children.

It's going to be sort of Dad's revenge.

Hopefully that 55 gallon drum won't get too rusty- that could potentially be a problem for pennies (I'm not a scientist- so I am just speculating) if there is rust in the drum. Anyone else agree or disagree with this from a scientific standpoint?

Gobirds66 wrote:I guess there are a few indicators that will tell me when enough is enough....
1.) When there is no more copper left to find in the wild. Then what I have will be enough.
2.) When banks will no longer source my pennies at face value, then I will have enough.
3.) When the wife kills me because she can no longer weave her way through the maze of what I call a hoard in the basement. Then I will have enough.
4.) I just peel off the face of the earth due to my obsession. Then I will have had enough.

The reality is that by the time I get to #4, the other 3 will most likely have happened, and I am going with #3 as the most likely scenario to stop my hoarding since i am still finding Wheats over 100 years old and my copper percentages have not really dropped too much over the years.

That is the best summary.

Just one more won't hurt!

How about a comparison of copper with nickel, silver and gold:

1. $5,000 of copper weighs approx. 1,600 lbs. and would fit in a container approx. 3 ft. W x 3' D x 2 1/2' H (I'm judging this from the appearance of RC members containers used to ship tons- no I haven't bought any- just judging from looking at the photos);
2. $5,000 of nickel should weight approx. 700 lbs. and would (wild guesstimate) fit in a container a bit smaller than half the size of the copper container;
3. $5,000 of silver weighs approx. 20# and would likely fit in a coffee can (actually 3- 100 oz. bars would easily fit in a coffee can with much room to spare); and
4. $5,000 of gold weighs a bit more than 4 ounces and would easily fit in the palm of your hand.

This is not a pitch for gold by any means, just a few facts to show the relative amounts of space taken up by these investments. These were just quick back of the envelope type calculations. I'm open to comments from others with more exacting numbers. I hope this isn't too off topic...