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deleted
19 Posts |
 Posted - 07/08/2007 : 16:42:52
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howdy, it's been awhile. just call me the topic hog.
the wife had an interesting question. I was talking about my dismal percentages and I wondered why they vary so much from region to region. her response about Michigan was that maybe because the economy is so bad there that more people are turning in their change. kinda makes sense but it's a little hard to believe that it's that bad there or elsewhere. another guess is that maybe some regions have a higher percentage of seniors who obviously would have older pennies. it is an interesting thing to ponder. discuss. oh yeah and are you like me, one of the lower percent'ers who just plain doggone don't believe ya'lls claims. disbelief..more like jealosly. I can't imagine pulling 25-30% on a regular basis. chow
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Crash
Penny Pincher Member
USA
155 Posts |
Posted - 07/10/2007 : 16:54:37
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stillinthegame,
Your wife might be on to something. I live on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and I haven't had the best of luck sorting. I usually average about 15%. I've chalked it up to Hurrican Katrina sucking a few banks into the Gulf of Mexico, but the truth is I only buy pennies from 3 places. If I branched out a little more, my percentage might go up. |
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centsless
Penny Pincher Member
119 Posts |
Posted - 07/10/2007 : 17:51:47
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| you might be onto something with the senior citizen thing. i live in Maine where they keep telling us the population is getting grayer all the time. and i consistently pull 25 to 30 percent. i got 1000 pennies this evening and got 28% copper and i do not count the 82's. i DO notice a somewhat high percentage of older coins which look like they have not seen too much circulation but those pennies are usually in the early to mid 80's, straddling the copper/zinc boundary. there is a big drop off in unc to AU coins before 1980. |
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Ardent Listener
Administrator
USA
4841 Posts |
Posted - 07/10/2007 : 20:03:11
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I live in a small city here in Ohio and yes it has an older population. I think a lot of the same pennies stay in circulation around here. I see a lot of older people pay for something right down to the penny in correct change.
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Fanaticism is doubling one's efforts, yet forgetting one's purpose.
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mickeyman
Penny Pincher Member
Canada
243 Posts |
Posted - 07/10/2007 : 21:34:02
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I've seen something similar in purchasing nickels in the Toronto area. My main purchases have been in banks in a neighbourhood where people are generally older and have lived in the area a long time, and these frequently score over 25% pure Ni nickels, whereas my purchases in Mississauga (a much newer place) scored only about 15%. But I did not buy enough rolls there to be sure that the result is statistically significant.
Not all who wander are lost. |
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centsless
Penny Pincher Member
119 Posts |
Posted - 07/11/2007 : 16:40:41
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| i usually dont make precise counts of my copper coins but i did today for the 2nd day in a row,just out of curiosity,and it was right on my usual average. i got 276 copper out of 1000 for 27.6 percent. again i do not count the 82's. i know of a few people who have gotten (by legal and illegal means) those empty water jugs used in the office to start a stash of pennies. i am sure that is true all over the country but nowhere more than in yankee country here in maine. |
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HoardCopperByTheTon
Administrator
USA
6807 Posts |
Posted - 07/11/2007 : 19:19:40
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I think the regional variances are caused by a combination of various factors. First let's assume that pennies don't really circulate like coinage used to in the old days. Here is kind of how I believe the flow goes. New pennies are minted by the mint in huge quantities to fill the demands of commerce. These billions of pennies are then shipped off to Federal Reserve banks. Those banks distribute large quantities to regional coin centers (Large armored car companies and large commercial banks) The banks distribute the pennies to thier merchant customers. The merchants use the pennies in change for their customers. The customers take the pennies home and throw them in a water jug or sock drawer to sit for years and not recirculate.
Eventually some of the customers will roll up some of the pennies and turn them in to the banks. They are then shipped from the banks to their central vault or coin processor where the rolls are broken open and the coins are rerolled and put back into the stream. The more pennies circulate in a given area the higher the probability of the coin hoarder (us) of getting a good percentage.
There are several factors that can influence the circulation of pennies in a given area.
The ease of coin redemption (If an area has easy convenient ways for folks to turn their pennies into folding money such as credit unions with free counters or CoinStar type machines that charge a percentage it increases the number of older pennies put back into the circulation stream. There is the economic prosperity of a region (people in areas with tough ecomomies are more apt to roll up their change and cash it in).. Age of the population in an area (Older people tend to use their change and roll up what is lying around and reuse it whereas younger folks just dump their change somewhere and let it sit.) Amount of commercial activity in an area (The more businesses in an area would mean they are probably pumping a higher percentage of new coins into circulation, thus diluting the mix.) If when you pick up several boxes of pennies you notice that you get lots of rolls or boxes of 2007 pennies, chances are that your percentages on the other used pennies you are getting are going to be significantly lower because this is a bank where the stream of new pennies is being pumped in. So even though it is easier to get boxes of pennies from banks that do a lot of business with merchant customers, the boxes obtained from credit unions or banks with less business customers will probably be sweeter.
While most of can't really vary the geographic area we get our pennies from (It is probably going to be somewhere near where we live or work), if your percentages seem low you might try sourcing your pennies from another bank or the next town over where the factors would be more favorable to a good mix. I propose that the ideal place to get pennies would be from a Credit Union in a smaller town with a free coin redemption center or lots of CoinStar machines around, with very few businesses, an older population, that has been hard hit economically. Such hypothetical boxes of pennies would probably average about 35% copper.
"Preserving coinage.. 2 tons at a time"
HoardCode0.1:M48/14USCA:US1Cu639700:US5Ni2400:CA5Ni46 |
Edited by - HoardCopperByTheTon on 07/11/2007 19:34:34 |
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just carl
Penny Hoarding Member
USA
601 Posts |
Posted - 07/12/2007 : 17:30:30
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The movement of coinage from storage to spending is basically the same everywhere. Old people that have saved that jar of coins starts to say things like hey, what are we doing with that anyway. Take it to a bank.
Then of course there is the job market. Now take a location like Gary, Indiana. Once a thriving community of steel workers in the Gary Works of steel mills. Most are gone now and the people are still there. Very, very high unimployment so out comes that old jar of coins to maintain a food supply. Same with other places like Detroit, Michigan and many other places where industry has changed or been eliminated. I remember going through a town in Wisconsin called Babrooster. It was and is built around an Ocean Spray company. If that company closes that town will die and the people there will suddenly start spending those coins in jars, cans and whatever.
Of course there is always the old people that have passed away and thier relatives raid the homestead and find and spend a large pile of coins. I remember some years back there was a story in the newspaper about a man that has been saving pennies (cents) for about 60 years and called a bank to turn them in. The photo in the paper was of several bank type trucks being used and the guards using wheel barrels to move all his pennies. Now that was nuts. No interest all those years on about $80,000.
Carl |
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centsless
Penny Pincher Member
119 Posts |
Posted - 07/13/2007 : 17:50:05
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| i think that story may be the same one i remember from 1994. it was on NBC news. a man in the Chicago area who had saved pennies for 65 years decided to turn them in. he had 8 million of them. i remember they showed 6 big garbage containers filled with rolled pennies. that is on average 338 pennies a day, 23.66 in pennies a week. ( i am guessing he was not married. what woman would put up with that?) |
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centsless
Penny Pincher Member
119 Posts |
Posted - 07/14/2007 : 16:11:30
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| whoops , i meant to put the $ sign in and i forgot.. Today i had 3 different instances where i found evidence that people here in maine are emptying out the mason jars that had been put away for a long time. at dunkin donuts this morning i picked up in change a series 1969 $5 bill that has seen very little wear. it was printed between 1969 and 1971 and entered circulation probably a year or so after being printed. Somebody socked that bill away at LEAST 30 years ago and maybe as many as 35 years ago. i also got in change at another place a 1956 d nickel which looked xf or better and lastly while looking thru my pennies today i got a roll which was evidently put away in 1986 as there were several unc pennies from that year. so people are definately breaking open their piggy banks |
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just carl
Penny Hoarding Member
USA
601 Posts |
Posted - 07/14/2007 : 20:40:53
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Your correct of course. That was Chicago about 1994 or thereabouts. It was also on TV and in our Chicago Tribune. Not sure of the exact amount, but true there was a lot of pennies. What I heard later was that the bank was immediately stormed by coin dealers such as Harland J. Berk and many others that are based here in Chicago. They were buying up pennies from the bank at face value nowing full well if the nut save new coins for that many years, that would mean he had lots and lots of brand new pennies from about somewhere in the 1930's. Imagine if there were for instance 10 1922 No D pennies in there in mint condition. That would be on todays market about $270,000 for just that.
Carl |
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pencilvanian
1000+ Penny Miser Member
USA
2209 Posts |
Posted - 07/14/2007 : 20:50:50
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Just a footnote:
Per an old OLD Whitman Bluebook 1959
a 1922 no mintmark penny would have been bought by a dealer for $1.50 in fine condition 
Even if this guy had one, back in the fifties it wasn't considered a real rarity until the late seventies/early eighties.
This guy could have been sitting on a gold mine in pennies and never even knew it.
I wonder if he had any 1955 double die cents that he didn't even know he had?
On second thought, I don't want to even think about it, it makes me a little depressed.
I should have chosen "Cut-n-Paste" as a forum name, since that is what I do, mostly. |
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geographic percentages..
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