Zinc, the base metal used to make the US cent, just passed the $1.80 per lb mark (apologies for the US imperial units!). This means those pennies in your savings jar are probably worth more melted down than they are by face value. The coinflation website puts each penny at $0.0101867. That’s a lot of significant figures and assumes a consistency of minting that I don’t believe is strictly adhered to in producing pennies.

Nevertheless, if you could melt them down for free, there is money to be made.

Think about it. All you have to do is withdraw some amount of money from your bank account in cash pennies, sell them to a zinc dealer for melting down at a profit, take your profit to the bank and repeat.

Coinflation.com says a nickel is actually worth 7 cents in terms of its melt value. Of course, nominally, a nickel is just 5 cents, so there’s a big profit to be made, even bigger than with pennies. So, why don’t Americans raid all their nickel jars too and melt for profit?

Only trouble is, couldn’t this be construed as illegal? As a matter of policy, the U.S. Mint does not promote coloring, plating or altering U.S. coinage, although no sanctions would be brought against someone unless such activity were considered fraudulent. (Ref: http://www.ustreas.gov/education/faq/coins/portraits.shtml). I suspect that melting down coins for profit could be argued as being fraudulent.

You’re not even allowed to open an image of a dollar bill in Photoshop, just think what they’d do if they caught you next to a furnace with a smashed piggy bank!

Just my two cents worth…