For All of You penny Bears
Mint warns against melting coins
Global growth has sparked a copper boomThe Royal Mint has warned people who might consider melting down 1p and 2p copper coins to think again.
With copper prices topping $9,000 a tonne, pre-1992 copper coinage is now worth twice its face value - although newer ones are copper-plated steel.
The Mint, the UK's official issuer of coinage, said it was illegal to tamper with UK currency.
The Mint declined to say how many of the UK's 6.3 billion 2p coins dated from before 1992.
Rapid economic growth in countries such as India and China has led to a boom in the value of a wide range of commodities, from copper and platinum to oil and gas.
The demand for copper, especially from the building trade, comes thanks to its role as one of the best electrical conductors in the world.
In the developing world, the result is that the theft of telephone lines - long a problem for telecoms carriers - is now worse than ever, although copper producers such as Chile and Zambia are making money from their mining operations.
In the UK, however, the Mint said that melting down its currency was not only illegal - but impractical.
"Even if it were legal, the practicalities involved in melting down such huge quantities of coins would seem to us to make it a highly improbable task for the average consumer," it said in a statement.
Global growth has sparked a copper boomThe Royal Mint has warned people who might consider melting down 1p and 2p copper coins to think again.
With copper prices topping $9,000 a tonne, pre-1992 copper coinage is now worth twice its face value - although newer ones are copper-plated steel.
The Mint, the UK's official issuer of coinage, said it was illegal to tamper with UK currency.
The Mint declined to say how many of the UK's 6.3 billion 2p coins dated from before 1992.
Rapid economic growth in countries such as India and China has led to a boom in the value of a wide range of commodities, from copper and platinum to oil and gas.
The demand for copper, especially from the building trade, comes thanks to its role as one of the best electrical conductors in the world.
In the developing world, the result is that the theft of telephone lines - long a problem for telecoms carriers - is now worse than ever, although copper producers such as Chile and Zambia are making money from their mining operations.
In the UK, however, the Mint said that melting down its currency was not only illegal - but impractical.
"Even if it were legal, the practicalities involved in melting down such huge quantities of coins would seem to us to make it a highly improbable task for the average consumer," it said in a statement.
posted by Not Sure if Al Gore or Global Warming is a Bigger Joke at
10:05 AM
4 Comments:
I think everyone was aware of that but please Ben what is the status of your "collection" of pennies. Did you bring them to Boston or are they melted away. I still crack up when I think of you standing over a melting machine in your "future billionaire" t-shirt. Good stuff
"Even if it were legal, the practicalities involved in melting down such huge quantities of coins would seem to us to make it a highly improbable task for the average consumer," it said in a statement.
My thesis, all along, is that the cost of energy to heat said coins would negate the arbitrage experienced by melting them.
Hoarding and melting are two different things. My grandmother never melted down her silver dollars, yet they are worth far more than a dollar and they went out of circulation over the course of time. Melting is not the end result. Sometimes I think that people are retarded.
It is like a stock trading at 5x cash earnings and people telling you that if it does not pay cash dividends that you have not made any money. You can talk until your blue in the face about retained earnings and compound growth and these mental midgets will never understand.
This is probably a horrible misquote but supposedly a fund board told Keyens once that they could not believe he was buying so and so's stock, everyone knew that they sucked. AT that point he said something to the effect of "Let me tell you about this value investing thing, if you thought it was a great idea, it probably would not be a great idea"
I may like the Penny idea the best of any idea, simply because everyone believes it is the dumbest thing that they have ever heard, yet throughout history it has happened again and again. Bad money pushes out good money. Gresham's law.
Here is an exercise:
If the government gave you two hundred dollars worth of gold, and told you that is was worth $100 would you spend it for $100.
Now lets suppose that there is also other money out there. That you could spend other than the new $200 gold piece. Which would you spend first the other money which has zero intrinsic value or the money with double the intrinsic value of the quoted value.
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