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Ryedale
Administrator
USA
523 Posts |
 Posted - 09/06/2006 : 21:30:03
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Hello All,
I have a couple of questions for everybody.
1. How long does it take you all to sort the copper coins from the mixed coins (pennies) by hand?
2. Would you actively do more if the sorting became mechanized. Meaning, would you build a very large hoard and just sit on them for many years if you could eliminate the hand work and it quickly, effectively beating the Banksters to the finish line? (who will eventually get most of the good coins)
3. If a machine were available for around $800 would you justify buying it now, knowing that you can use it to build that hoard and essentially pay off that machine after x number of hours of run time?(lets say 300 coins per minute which is 18000 per hr.)
Thanks for any response Ryedale Formerly Sporlan
Ryedale
Hoard Copper Pennies,
The market will develop
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ImperialFleet
Penny Pincher Member
USA
217 Posts |
Posted - 09/06/2006 : 21:40:21
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1. about 1000 per hour if I go undistracted.
2. I would sort as many as I could get my hands on. I can get about 5000/week from my bank w/o so much as a blink. I would have to find out what their maximum threshold is before they start refusing or charging me. But, in short, yes.
3. $800 is a hefty price but I am not stupid and can see how it could payoff. Pardon the expression, but I would have to pinch a lot of pennies to pay for such a device. My concerns besides price would be I still have to manually sort my hoard for the Wheaties, and also what does this machine do with Canadians? Spit all/part of them out as zincs? What kind of warranty or service contract [if any] would come with the machine for $800? Obviously a broken sorter is losing the owner money.
I am anxious to see the finished product. I hope my constructive criticism helps you in this endeavor.
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“Ultimately, the Fed can flood the system by buying any kind of asset, or even dropping bank notes from helicopters" -Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke |
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Ryedale
Administrator
USA
523 Posts |
Posted - 09/06/2006 : 22:06:37
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quote:
Originally posted by ImperialFleet
1. about 1000 per hour if I go undistracted.
2. I would sort as many as I could get my hands on. I can get about 5000/week from my bank w/o so much as a blink. I would have to find out what their maximum threshold is before they start refusing or charging me. But, in short, yes.
3. $800 is a hefty price but I am not stupid and can see how it could payoff. Pardon the expression, but I would have to pinch a lot of pennies to pay for such a device. My concerns besides price would be I still have to manually sort my hoard for the Wheaties, and also what does this machine do with Canadians? Spit all/part of them out as zincs? What kind of warranty or service contract [if any] would come with the machine for $800? Obviously a broken sorter is losing the owner money.
I am anxious to see the finished product. I hope my constructive criticism helps you in this endeavor.
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“Ultimately, the Fed can flood the system by buying any kind of asset, or even dropping bank notes from helicopters" -Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke
I understand the Price seems high, but I have fronted a substantial amount of money in this project for R&D patents, Plastic mold tooling, over $13,000 for that alone, design work and of course components for the machines. I do however understand that this is not my potential customers problem and is a risk I have taken durring development. There are many fixed costs to building the machine as there is with any product. Also it is made right here in the USA so my customers will unfortunately have to pay the non produced in China pricing. This is a very Nitche product and must be viewed as a tool or high level hobby device. However at this price point I argue that there are many of us, myself especially that have purchased many "hobby" items that individually exceed this price and untold items that combine to dwarf the cost of this machine. That being said none of those items can potentilly make any money. They are perhaps fun and entertaining to use , but do not potentially make money.
I have not worked out the details of a warranty period yet, but it will be a very durable machine and spare parts will be available and affordable after the sale. There are some "consumables" in the machine, (no not cookies) that will need replacement. The manufacturer of one component says it can go 3,000,000 coins before its consumable will wear out.
It will sort the wheats with the coppers, so you have a ~71% time savings righ off the bat. It also gets all the copper canadian coins, which incidently are 98% and meltable without question and qualify for grade or number 1 copper.
Gotta go so I'll check the posts again later. Thanks for the reply Ryedale
Ryedale
Hoard Copper Pennies,
The market will develop |
Edited by - Ryedale on 09/06/2006 22:43:49 |
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Canadian_Nickle
Penny Hoarding Member
Canada
938 Posts |
Posted - 09/06/2006 : 22:33:54
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| I think you should also market it in Canada - we're still swimming in 50-60% copper boxes here, so the machine could pay for itself faster here. Also, you could consider selling it to scrap yards who may want to buy/keep both the coppers and zincs, but sort them by type, especially if buying large mixed lots from the public. |
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Metalophile
Penny Collector Member
USA
320 Posts |
Posted - 09/06/2006 : 23:54:48
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There's also always the risk that the price of copper retreats back below $3 or even $2. If the world economy slows and/or we see the long awaited housing bust, that might even be likely.
As for myself, I probably wouldn't buy a machine. Now, if I had some close friends nearby who wanted to share the use (and cost) of the machine, AND the price of copper looks like it'll stay up there or go even higher, then I would consider it.
Metalophile |
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132 Posts |
Posted - 09/07/2006 : 05:58:45
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Sounds like a great idea !
Just curious as to the overall size of the machine ?
Would the machine sort 50 at a time for rolls or spit them out in some kinda bowl / container ?
Please oh please.....dont sell them to banks ! |
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Metalophile
Penny Collector Member
USA
320 Posts |
Posted - 09/07/2006 : 07:03:23
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Maybe you could sell some machines to Coinstar?
Metalophile |
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Ryedale
Administrator
USA
523 Posts |
Posted - 09/07/2006 : 12:00:41
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Here is a small sample picture of the macine. It is the same pic as in the gallery on the site, I am working on adding content all the time Size of unit is 8W x 10D x 16H in. My website is published but not complete by any means yet. you may browse around. I will be adding more pics and another movie to the Gallery before long. You wil see non pertinent info on some pages. Eventually there will be a store that one could purchase the machine with a credit card. It will be hosted by yahoo merchant services. I will have a few machines available by the end of September, and could possibly ship some before the official launch on Nov 1 if somebody absolutely had to have one.
Thanks Ryedale
Ryedale
Hoard Copper Pennies,
The market will develop |
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ImperialFleet
Penny Pincher Member
USA
217 Posts |
Posted - 09/07/2006 : 17:46:43
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Looking forward to it Rydale! I may very well be interested in buying one. Thanks for the efforts and the update 
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“Ultimately, the Fed can flood the system by buying any kind of asset, or even dropping bank notes from helicopters" -Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke |
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Ryedale
Administrator
USA
523 Posts |
Posted - 09/08/2006 : 17:05:45
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quote:
Originally posted by Canadian_Nickle
I think you should also market it in Canada - we're still swimming in 50-60% copper boxes here, so the machine could pay for itself faster here. Also, you could consider selling it to scrap yards who may want to buy/keep both the coppers and zincs, but sort them by type, especially if buying large mixed lots from the public.
I am planning on marketing them Canada. I have even taken steps to include special nickel sized parts in the machine, to allow Canadian hoarders to quickly sort thier nickels. By the way how do you currently sort out the NI nickels from your coins. I see the newest issue of nickes from the RCM is a coin comprised of 94.5% steel and the remainder is copper and NI. Do these newer nickels stick to a magnet? I know the older NI nickels do so my point is that sorting with a magnet is not very effective is it? Please describe your process, unless thats a secret. Thanks Ryedale
Ryedale
Hoard Copper Pennies,
The market will develop |
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Canadian_Nickle
Penny Hoarding Member
Canada
938 Posts |
Posted - 09/08/2006 : 20:17:11
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I sort nickels by hand. About 2000/hour not including rolling.
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deleted
73 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2006 : 14:30:03
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I noticed your picture of the machine has what appears to be a feed slot and a hopper. Please tell me that you dump a bunch of coins into the hopper and I'm not hand feeding them into the feed slot. I'd tire of doing that very quickly. I've been racking my brain trying to think of a way to do this so if your machine works reliably and copper prices stay high, I may be inclined to shell out that much cash. I do put a value on my time so if you save me 80 hours and it costs $800 well basically I pay $10/hr to use it but I get paid much better than that at my regular job and it takes me an hour to mow my yard and I'd gladly pay somebody $10 to do that for me.
Also, no offense but would you take paypal once all the kinks are worked out? I'm wary of giving out my credit card number unless yahoo stores have built in credit card protection and such. I use my credit card all the time online when using well known retailers but I think twice before doing it elsewhere. Wouldn't be because it's you, it would be because it is a small shop, and newly opened shop.
Hope that helps.
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Ryedale
Administrator
USA
523 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2006 : 17:32:51
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quote:
Originally posted by eccentric
I noticed your picture of the machine has what appears to be a feed slot and a hopper. Please tell me that you dump a bunch of coins into the hopper and I'm not hand feeding them into the feed slot. I'd tire of doing that very quickly. I've been racking my brain trying to think of a way to do this so if your machine works reliably and copper prices stay high, I may be inclined to shell out that much cash. I do put a value on my time so if you save me 80 hours and it costs $800 well basically I pay $10/hr to use it but I get paid much better than that at my regular job and it takes me an hour to mow my yard and I'd gladly pay somebody $10 to do that for me.
Also, no offense but would you take paypal once all the kinks are worked out? I'm wary of giving out my credit card number unless yahoo stores have built in credit card protection and such. I use my credit card all the time online when using well known retailers but I think twice before doing it elsewhere. Wouldn't be because it's you, it would be because it is a small shop, and newly opened shop.
Hope that helps.
In that picture, the "Feed" is simply a cutout in the sheet metal where an on off switch goes. I did not have them when I got the enclosures from the enclosure fabber. You do simply dump coins in the hopper and turn it on with the FEED switch. It will hold ~700 pennies as shown, and you can get extension hoppers for about $10 each that add 500 per extension capacity. I do not recommend going more than 2 extentions because of the weight of the coins. It will put too much load on the feed hopper and tax the feed hopper motor to an early failure. I recommend only one hopper extension. so you can get 1100 coins in at one filling with one extension.
You are looking at this the correct way. There is a value for everybodys time. This is a labor saving device. I see many types of users for this machine. The basic hoarder that wants to get rid of the zinc and hoard the copper, this machine eliminates the time needed in addition to getting mixed and returning the zinc, he can enjoy a very fast sort method. I see coin dealers getting these to reduce sorting time by more than 70% then they can hand sort the coppers for the elusive wheat pennies now concentradted into the 30% remainder. This machine can be used as a validation device for the metal brokers buying sorted coins. IE a guy comes in with a drum of copper coins. The buyer needs to check for purity, take a sample of his coins, run them through the Coin Artist to verify he is getting all coppers. Another way to justify the cost of this machine is to go in together with a group. For instance a coin club, or family may want one. That way if you all work together getting coins from different places, you can quickly sort them and then work on returning the zinc to circulation without agitating the tellers at the banks. One could also put an ad that you are willing to pay face value for penny hoards, and you can count them with the Coin Artist as you sort. You could also use it as a service to people with a large hoard. Offer to sort the coins for them for a small fee. This machine should be looked at as a money making device to truly get the most benefit from it. Another way would be to hook up or sponsor penny drives for charity. You then sort the donated coins and deposit the zinc and buy the coppers for face. All you need is the Coin Artist.
As to your concern about the credit card, I understand your reservation. I also have paypal but would rather not use them because they tend to gouge a bit. I will most likely be using a Yahoo Merchant Store for my service account, where I do not even see the credit card numbers. I do not even plan on getting a credit card service unless I feel I am missing business because of it. I have absolutely no intention of screwing up my long term opportunities by geting into a credit card scandal. I want my customers to be happy with their machines and spread the word around to other people with like minds and interests. Thanks Ryedale
Ryedale
Hoard Copper Pennies,
The market will develop |
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deleted
103 Posts |
 Posted - 09/09/2006 : 17:34:07
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I'll be honest and tell you that $800 would be out of my price range. I don't make so much money that I would pay out ten dollars an hour for a machine that would sort pennies in my free time. Sorting is a hobby for me.
If there is (or will be) one cent profit for each copper cent I find, it would take 80,000 copper cents (800X100=80,000)just to break even. I could buy 8 boxes of nickels with the $800 or 61.5 ounces of silver at $13.00 per ounce with the $800.
No offense Ryedale, but for me to pay that much I would have to have a business where peope like us would pay me to rent it by the minute. Which might not be a bad idea.
All communication presented to this forum is private commerce by this forum user/member. All terms of private commerce are as this forum user/member understands it. Member F.D.I.C. Substantial penalty for early withdraw. |
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deleted
478 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2006 : 18:11:36
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A group buy of a machine for people in the same area may be worth it. Say four or five people all hoarding and pooling the potential profits together.
Even if copper goes down to $1.50 a lb it won't stay there. Inflation is a constant. |
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Ryedale
Administrator
USA
523 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2006 : 18:12:25
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quote:
Originally posted by Copperhead
I'll be honest and tell you that $800 would be out of my price range. I don't make so much money that I would pay out ten dollars an hour for a machine that would sort pennies in my free time. Sorting is a hobby for me.
If there is (or will be) one cent profit for each copper cent I find, it would take 80,000 copper cents (800X100=80,000)just to break even. I could buy 8 boxes of nickels with the $800 or 61.5 ounces of silver at $13.00 per ounce with the $800.
No offense Ryedale, but for me to pay that much I would have to have a business where peope like us would pay me to rent it by the minute. Which might not be a bad idea.
All communication presented to this forum is private commerce by this forum user/member. All terms of private commerce are as this forum user/member understands it. Member F.D.I.C. Substantial penalty for early withdraw.
I agree this machine is not for all sorters. I would love to make this a cheaper machine and in time it may become less expensive as I recover initial costs for injection molds and such. At 25% coppers you would need to sort a total of 320,000 coins to get the 80,000 coppers. That would take this machine less than 18 hours of run time to pay for itself. I think where most people will have trouble is actually aquiring the coinage. I personally went to the bank and got 4 brinks boxes at a time and did that for a total of 150,000 coins. That was with the original machine which was a joke compared to this new durable machine.
Well thanks for the input, and watch my site from time to time because I may have specials from time to time. Thanks Ryedale
Ryedale
Hoard Copper Pennies,
The market will develop |
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Canadian_Nickle
Penny Hoarding Member
Canada
938 Posts |
Posted - 09/10/2006 : 15:47:24
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Does the machine tally the coins it sorts, or does it simply sort them. Also, what happens if there's other coins mixed in (nickels, dimes, etc). Finally, what is your web address?
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Ryedale
Administrator
USA
523 Posts |
Posted - 09/10/2006 : 19:44:31
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quote:
Originally posted by Canadian_Nickle
Does the machine tally the coins it sorts, or does it simply sort them. Also, what happens if there's other coins mixed in (nickels, dimes, etc). Finally, what is your web address?
It has two re-setable digital totalizers. the "total" counter counts total coins fed from through the feeder/hopper device. The other one counts the zinc coins. The difference between the two totalizers, is the total coppers.
You could use the machine as a counter. It will jam if other coins are mixed in, the jam will have to be removed by hand, which takes about a minute after a few times.
Please look at You must be logged in to see this link. on the products page to see about the nickel opportunities (last paragraph)
I think you are sitting on a copper mine there in Canada, with about 50% copper pennies circulating, you could litterally hoard tons of copper with zero downside risk, except the cost of the machine, and you could always re-sell it after getting your hoard. I watched for a wrapper on ebay and ended up picking one up cheap. I would re-wrap the zincs and trade them in at a local bank. the tellers liked to get my wrapped (paper) rolls, I presume because they were easier to open than the plastic wrapped Brinks rolls.
Take care Ryedale
Ryedale
Hoard Copper Pennies,
The market will develop |
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Tourney64
1000+ Penny Miser Member
USA
1035 Posts |
Posted - 09/11/2006 : 18:02:09
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| I am working a mechanized coin sorter and it should cost me no more than $100. If I get it working, I would offer the complete plans for a small fee of no more than $10. |
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Canadian_Nickle
Penny Hoarding Member
Canada
938 Posts |
Posted - 09/11/2006 : 19:09:11
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| Hey ryedale - will you take $400 face in copper pennies for a machine? |
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Ryedale
Administrator
USA
523 Posts |
Posted - 09/11/2006 : 20:53:47
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quote:
Originally posted by Canadian_Nickle
Hey ryedale - will you take $400 face in copper pennies for a machine?
Canadian Nickle,
If there were a solid market for the coppers I would say yes, but would have to go by weight and not face value. The Canadian coins varied in weight by as much as much as .74 grams, so face value in Canadian coins varies accordingly.
(see You must be logged in to see this link.)
Your question brings up the larger problem that all the hoarders have yet to address realisticly. Where can you get rid of the copper (or nickel) coins?
It seems there are 4 key components to making money on sorting out these coins.
1 coin supply
2 sorting
3 returning zinc or steel coins.
4 flipping or scraping the copper as we cannot just sit on it forever.
Of these now, for all the efforts here, we collectively have only one of these solved, the sorting.
I understand that in Canada that the melting of coins is sort of illegal, where in the states it is not. I will begin the next quest tonight and start trying to piece the other portions of this together.
I am not going to drive around to Wal-Mart and get a pocket full of penny rolls per trip. It's time to get bold and start questioning the banks the armored car services, the federal reserve banks, bankers, bank managers, metal brokers, secret societies, iluminati, Masons, or or whatever it takes.
Perhaps we need to collectively open our own "change" bank so we have access. whatever it takes. If we do not get these coins, we will only get the gleanings.
Whoever can figure out the other parts of this equation, can become very wealthy. The hand sorting of the billions of nickles and pennies is essentially over.
When I started I bought a commercial bank grade wrapper, It wraps 30 tight paper wrapped rolls per minute. I got it on Ebay. New this piece of bank machinery was over $25,000 in the early 90's. It served me by producing perfectly bank wrapped rolls of zinc coins and I would trade out with the girls at the bank, for more unsorted. I am willing to share the use of this machine in the Southwest Michigan area for the price of the paper which is $0.003 per roll and they accept zinc pennies to pay for the paper . Yes there is a cost to doing all this on a large scale, but with perhaps a group effort it can be profitable.
If any of you know metal brokers it's time to call them, same with those of you who have friends in banking. How about "Iron Mike" in Detroit? I'll check with the metal managers in west Michigan.
Sorry for my rant Ryedale
Ryedale
Hoard Copper Pennies,
The market will develop |
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Metalophile
Penny Collector Member
USA
320 Posts |
Posted - 09/11/2006 : 22:27:20
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If you could figure out who services your local Coinstar machines, perhaps they would be willing to trade you their stream of pennies for face value? It would save them having to process them and take them to the bank!
Metalophile |
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Canadian_Nickle
Penny Hoarding Member
Canada
938 Posts |
Posted - 09/11/2006 : 22:29:56
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I only sort nickels right now because I love nickels and there's also the profit incentive there. I'm really not worried about finding a place to sell them- one day in the future I'll just sell them to a bullion shop for x-ammount per piece.
Pennies are too small and worthless for me to want to hand sort them, but if I had a machine to sort (and maybe one to roll) I'd be all over the penny hoarding.
I've talked to Brinks, and they simply deliver coins here in Canada - I'd have to purchase coins at the bank. However, if the fee is not huge (~$1-$2 /box) it might be worthwhile to order say $1000 at a time in boxes and sort out the ~50% copper., and also take out a small "I will pay paper cash for your coin hoard" add in the paper and use the sorter to comb and count the pennies.
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73 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2006 : 04:35:05
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I asked the teller at my local bank if they were required by law to give me 1,000,000 pennies ($10,000) if I asked for them as obviously they probably don't have that many on hand and for them to get that many and it probably costs them extra from brinks but I have no idea if there are any laws requiring them to as a customer of the bank to honor my request without a surcharge or not. She just kind of gave me an odd look like what the heck do you want 1,000,000 pennies for and said she didn't know. I didn't question her any further or ask for a manager that might have known as it was a Saturday morning and a long line of people was starting to form.
Obviously there is overhead to smelting coins. I have no idea how much overhead. I was brainstorming that maybe some type of industrial blender/shredder or something that rips them all into indistinguishable small pieces might be suitable, just looks like copper scrap then....or perhaps a giant crushing machine compressing them into one block (albeit the pressure would have to be high enough that the block didn't look like a block of pennies, Lincoln would have to be rendered unrecognizable, unless scrap yards will really take pennies).
I also read somewhere that not only was it illegal in Canada to melt the coins but it was also illegal to take them out of the country, but highly doubtful they enforce this latter part unless you have a trunk full of coins and you get stopped leaving the country. Not like they check your pockets for spare change while you’re leaving….
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pencilvanian
1000+ Penny Miser Member
USA
2209 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2006 : 17:07:38
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You might want to check out these sites
You must be logged in to see this link.
You must be logged in to see this link.
They sell the coins, but not the machinery to do the waffling, but maybe they will tell you
what they use to squash the coins.
Also, check out the Topic Scrap metal Selling pennies for scrap metal?
The only drawback to this great site is there is so much great information its easy to overlook something that was posted previously. I’m not complaining. This site is a Gold Silver Nickel and Copper mine waiting to be prospected. |
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73 Posts |
Posted - 09/13/2006 : 00:49:19
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pencilvanian,
Actually I had read that (probably where I got the links to where I determined it wasn't illegal to sell pennies as scrap as long as fraud isn't the intent), but I didn't read it recently enough to see your post on waffled coins.
My comment actually probably was based on that exact article, someone said the scrap dealer would give them $2/lb for copper pennies and I was just thinking out loud (or in the forum) whether there were ways of altering the pennies is such a way they might demand a higher scrap value as the person who said the scrap yard would buy them at $2/lb was suspicious the dealer was just going to keep them as pennies and not actually use them from scrap and that deflated the price he was getting for the pennies.
That said, obviously copper doesn't sell for scrap at the same rate it does on the commodities market. Ok, I did a search this time and stealing a link Tourney64 posted You must be logged in to see this link., as of today scrap #2 copper is $2.71/lb. Now being a geek and assuming that price is correct and you don’t have to smelt or squash the pennies (disregard the next few sentences if you don’t want to go through the math) you get 30% coppers from unsorted pennies from the bank, I calculate there are 146 copper pennies in a pound. So you get $2.71 for $1.46 worth of copper pennies, but you had to sort through 3 times that approximately to get to all copper pennies in the first place. So assume you can manage to get $10,000 from the bank and sorted in one month. You’ll end up with 2055 lbs (30,000 pennies) you’ll need to truck it to the scrap yard. Now if all my assumptions are correct 2055 lbs * $2.71/lb = $5569. Then take $5569 - $3000 that you paid for the coppers and you have a profit of $2569 profit or scale down to $256 if you’re only getting $1000 in pennies or adjust how many you could do per month accordingly...essentially 25% return on investment (not accounting for cost of potentially coin disfiguring whether waffling, smelting, squashing or shredding and not counting time it takes you to go to the bank or sort the pennies or gas it takes to drive to bank or scrap yard, etc).
Personally, I could live off $2569 /mo...not that I’m going to quit my job and buy/sort/sell pennies fulltime, but it sounds tempting as long as it took less than 40/wk to do all this. Really sweet deal if I can do it in my spare time to supplement my income, I think I could live with a $30,000 bonus over the next 12 months...and I won’t even go into the fact that if you started with $10,000 next time around you’d have enough cash on hand to buy $12569, then more the next month compounding monthly...turning your $10,000 into $123,628 in twelve months but I highly doubt you can sort 12,362,800 in a month and if you could I think by that point the bank would have a picture of you on the front door that says do not let this person enter the building
Grief, I wrote a lot...not to mention it’s 1:30 AM, good thing my boss doesn’t care if I come in late to work as long as I make it there in time to attend meetings.
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