Friday, January 29, 2010

Hoarding Growing in Popularity

Copper hoarding has been steadily growing in popularity over the past few years. This last year has shown an explosion in the number of small time copper hoarders. This is definately no reason for panic as there are plenty of copper cents still in circulation but it does show a trend similar to that of the wheat cent. Ironically enough, this is comming at a time when we are changing the image on the reverse of the penny. Those of us who are hoarding copper cents now have a unique advantage of building a collection of these coins when there are still many in circulation to choose from. Look at how often you find a wheat cent in circulation. I believe this will be the fate of the pre-1981 cent within the next 10-15 years. I believe the copper cent with disappear from circulation much quicker than the wheat cent did due the the abundance of copper hoarders we have today. On that same note, even the most common wheat cents will go for 4 to 5 times face value in poor condition. I believe that the copper cent will only have a collectors value of 2-3 times it's face value due to the flooding of the market in a decade or so. That said, we should not have to worry about that as the price of copper will put the metal content value of these coins far above face value by that time.