After real­iz­ing a moment too late that I had handed the cashier a wheat penny, I checked my pocket for more ancient his­tory. To my sur­prise, I found a 1967 cent. That’s pretty old I think.

I throw away pen­nies some­times. Usu­ally when I’m clean­ing. Not many peo­ple real­ize it, but in 1982, the gov­ern­ment made pen­nies utterly worth­less for most non-monetary pur­poses: the mint changed the alloy from 95% cop­per to 0.8% cop­per. (That is ran­dom fact #1.)

Back at the office, I was chat­ting with our trans­former ven­dor on the phone when he launched into another tirade about the ris­ing com­mod­ity prices of cop­per and what he’s going to have to do to my finished-goods prices if the mar­ket doesn’t come to its senses. I checked this out online. Yesterday’s COMEX trad­ing price for cop­per is an aston­ish­ing $2.5035/lb. (Ran­dom fact #2.)

A pre-1982 penny weighs 3.1 grams. (Yes, I looked it up. Ran­dom fact #3.)

There­fore, I cal­cu­late that my 1967 penny is worth 1.63 cents… as scrap metal. For­get about rolling pennies—I’m buy­ing a furnace!