Save (DON’T SPEND!) all pennies dated before 1983. Learn WHY you should be saving all COPPER PENNIES from 1982 and earlier!
I always save pennies dated 1982 and earlier as I find them in my pocket change and from coin roll hunting. After 3+ years of saving these old copper pennies in a tin can, I’ve decided to go through my stash of 1,475 pre-1983 Lincoln cents and look for valuable errors and varieties.
Watch and learn my tips for saving copper pennies — and WHY you shouldn’t spend pennies dated before 1983. See the valuable old pennies I found. Plus, a list of the pre-1983 pennies you should be looking for!
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TRANSCRIPT:
Hi this is Josh with The Fun Times Guide! What I’m showing you here is a couple of piles of pennies from this big
— well, I wouldn’t say big — but it’s a 15oz coffee can of Lincoln cents I’ve saved over the course of the past 3 or 4 years. These are all different dates. What they all have in common is that these are all pre-1983 Lincoln cents.
I saved these because up until the middle of 1982, the US Mint struck one cent coins in a bronze composition — which is about 95% copper 5% zinc most years. Some years, it was 5% tin and zinc. But what makes these coins a little more valuable than face value is the copper content. At a minimum, these are worth about 1.8 to 2 cents a pop. So they’re worth more than face value. They’re too valuable to spend. Not really valuable enough to really make any big money off of but…
You know, I enjoy collecting coins and I have had fun keeping these aside from my pocket change finds and roll finds and such. So, in another video I was going through these coins and showing you kind of how I was dividing everything up to look for certain types of errors and varieties and all those things. These are my rejects.
Out of about 1,475 pennies, I have about 1,382 right here in this can that didn’t have any significant errors, or
varieties, or off-center strikes, or those kinds of things. But what I did end up finding were a few cool things. So I will start over here first. These are all Lincoln cents that have no evidence of wear — so essentially they’re uncirculated. Yes, I did find them in rolls and many of them came from pocket change, but I’m guessing (which I’m not surprised these are uncirculated) I’m guessing that these were probably coins or pennies that people received 35… 40… 50 years ago and just threw aside into a jar or a box — because even 50 years ago a penny wasn’t worth a whole lot of money.
So it’s not uncommon that people have been throwing aside pennies and when they’re brand-new… You know, and the person who might have gotten these thrown aside, they retained their detail. And a lot, in fact all these pennies here in this little pile, show complete luster at all angles even on the high points when I flash them around in the light. And please pardon my hands… I’ve been going through a bunch of pennies and some of them had grime and such. I dug in a pile and there was something on one of them — I don’t know what it was, don’t want to know what it was. But anyway, so pardon my fingers… but these all show complete luster. So these are all uncirculated and they’re probably worth 5 to 10 cents a pop. Nothing rare in here for sure. But they are worth a lot more than face value — at least proportionally.
Now, what you see over here… First of all, a couple of wheat cents that got into the pile — which is pretty neat. They’re common. Worth a few cents a pop — but I still keep them aside anyway. I do keep my Wheat cents. What you see here are about 9 pennies — a few of them 1972’s. Now why was 1972 an important date to look for? Well, that was the year that the US Mint strike a number of different kinds of doubled dies. None of the ones I have here are the Class 1 doubled die which is worth like $200 and worth a lot of money. But these do seem to show signs of minor hub doubling in the date and in the inscription “Liberty”. Which you really can’t see in the detail (or rather on the video) too well — but it is there. And it’s not machine doubling.
Machine doubling happens when the dies that are striking the coins are aging and they start to either shift during a strike or are wearing out to the point that they show basically a double impression of the lettering and the design. That’s not the case here. There is some kind of hub doubling evident. Hub doubling being that when the hub which creates the design on the die and then strikes the coins — that’s when the hub impresses the design twice at slightly different angles on the die. So whenever that die produces a coin, every coin it produces will show some evidence of that doubling from the shift that the die in the hub had while they were meeting to create the working dies to create these coins. So some of these — actually all of 1972s here — show some kind of hub doubling.
Again, it’s not the major Class 1 doubled die which is worth a lot of money. But they are apparently some minor doubled dies. I want to go through my coin attribution catalog and see which ones these are. But they’re worth a few bucks apiece. And then, I came across 1960 small dates which are another not very valuable variety, but they’re a little scarcer than the large dates. Other pieces I looked for when I was going for these coins where the 1969-S doubled die. I didn’t see any here. 1970-S small date. Again, none here. I did find some stuff in the S’s but none were small dates. I looked for a 1982-D small date bronze. I came across many 1982-D’s but none with a small date variety. So these are all common.
So I was looking for various coins and I was really quite fortunate to find a few that actually are worth quite more than face value! Another coin I found is this 1976 cent with a counterstamp of the state of Kansas on there. This is not a US Mint variety. This is actually rather a post-Mint counterstamp. These particular pieces which were struck I think around 1979 to 1981. Most of these Lincoln cents that have the state counterstamps are dated up to 1981… or 1982. These were private mint counterstamps that were struck to commemorate the Bicentennial — the 200th birthday of our nation’s existence in 1976.
There are people who collect them, believe it or not. Though it’s not really a Mint variety, there are folks who collect these and many other kinds of private mint counterstamps. So there’s some value in that. I think it’s neat anyway to hold aside. What you see here again out of 1,500 or so pennies, there are 9 or 10 or 12 I guess if you count the wheat cents that are definitely worth holding aside. 70 to 75 uncirculated pieces worth 5 to 10 cents a pop. And the rest are worth 1.8 to 2 cents apiece — I’ll sell them to my coin dealer for a little premium over face value.
You know, I didn’t make a windfall. I didn’t pay off my home. But you know what, I found some pretty cool coins in circulation for face value — and I think that’s not bad! So I’m hoping that this inspires you to look through your own coins and maybe find some cool varieties or errors or other neat unusual pieces. I’m wishing you all the best! Thanks for watching this video. Take care.
