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Cerulean
Penny Hoarding Member
USA
993 Posts |
 Posted - 10/18/2006 : 09:56:18
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Howdy, forum! I just discovered this place yesterday; I thought I was the only one this obsessed with everyday coins. Now I can point this out to my wife and say "See?!? I'm not the only one!"
For about 2 years, I've been throwing my dimes, nickels, and pennies in an urn, and periodically sort it out by year. I find it interesting to see how the age of coins correlates with the rarity; maybe I'll post some charts later. As a novice collecter, I've been screening my change for anything unusual... wheats, canadian, silver, and other foreign coins. These I've been setting aside. Over the years, I've accomeulated wheat pennies back to 1919, canadian coins back to 1940, and coins from 20 other nations dating back to 1949. Not bad for someone who just watches what he finds in his change!
But now that I've been turned on to the idea of copper hoarding, something I've been doing for years just not deliberately, I've just sorted my urn for coppers. As I previously mentioned the wheat and foreign coins have been cherry-picked out, but here's what I noted:
309 pre-'82 coppers
1008 '82-;06 zincs
1317 total pennies
(I'm talking US coins here. For now, I'm treating '82s as zincs.) This gives a 23.5% copper yield (and 1 silver dime). More interestingly, I sorted all denominations by mint mark. Most were P, some 20% were D, but out of over 250 eligible coins only 3 were S. That was surprisingly low; over 10% of my wheats are S. Did the San Fran mint slack off after WWII? I also expected the P and D numbers to match 50/50, and was surprised to find a 4-to-1 ratio instead. I noticed that it took about 5 years for coins released by the Denver mint to diffuse to the east.
Which brings me to production figures. I will shamelessly plug my wikipedia page here:
You must be logged in to see this link.
If any of you fellow coin geeks could help fill out this table, I'd much appreciate it! It's difficult to find production figures online.
Happy hunting!
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Metalophile
Penny Collector Member
USA
320 Posts |
Posted - 10/18/2006 : 12:29:25
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A Redbook or Bluebook of US coin values by R.S. Yeoman should help you fill in the blanks of your wikipedia page. Will also break down by mint mark.
Welcome to the board!
Metalophile |
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deleted
73 Posts |
 Posted - 10/18/2006 : 16:02:20
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I would suggest (or rather I'm a big enough geek to want to see that information) that as well as a total coins in a year column that you add a total number of coins minted row at the bottom by denomination.
Just yesterday, I was looking at total number of pennies minted, minus proofs, and only going back to 1909, so only Lincolns. I came up with 154,999,253,744 1909 to 1981 Lincolns minted (not counting proofs). I used You must be logged in to see this link. and I check a year or two against redbook and it was the same so I'm going to trust the rest of the numbers are correct as well. Of course if you use it on wikipedia you probably have to reference it as the source. I tried finding the same information on You must be logged in to see this link. but was unsuccessful (of course I didn't try super hard.
Hope that helps.
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Cerulean
Penny Hoarding Member
USA
993 Posts |
Posted - 10/19/2006 : 20:16:19
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Just in case anyone would find this interesting....
Here's a year-by-year breakdown of what was in my change urn lately. Consider this graph a snapshot sampling of what's in circulation in the US in recent years.
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deleted
73 Posts |
Posted - 10/20/2006 : 21:44:05
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| I would like to clarify my statement of 154,999,253,744 1909 to 1981 Lincolns minted (not counting proofs). It includes all years including WWII pennies which wouldn't be all copper but I'm sure you'd be happy if you found one. I didn't say those were all copper when coming up with that figure and I could be off a few billion but it should be close. I figured since this is under the "hoarding copper pennies" section it might be assumed I meant all copper. |
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Cerulean says 'Hi!'
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