Dollars from Old Coins

A metals company in Ohio is hoping its Congressional representative can help reverse a federal law so that old pennies can be melted into secondary ingots.

Southern Ohio’s Jackson Metals has suffered since the federal government banned the melting of all pennies in legislation that was based on potential profiteering from melting new pennies because of the escalating cost of the metals.

Jackson Metals and its president Walter Luhrman have a business model based on sifting through roughly 5 billion pennies each year to cull pre-1982 high-copper-content pennies, which contain metal worth 1.7 cents.

According to a news item in The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, the firm in Jackson County, Ohio, would like to segregate those older pennies so they could be melted by ingot-makers who serve the fixtures and hardware markets.

The newer pennies with minimal copper would be re-circulated in parts of the country where pennies are needed, according to Luhrman.

Melting pennies has been illegal since a ban that took effect last year.

According to the news report, Luhrman has been working with his Congressman Zack Space to introduce a bill or amendment to overturn the penny-melting ban.

The melting of the pennies would allow the company to tap into a new stream of material while sifting through the coins it purchases from reverse vending machines and other sources.

Currently, Jackson Metals seeks out Canadian nickels made before 1981 (they contain metal worth more than 14 cents each) and other older coins with metallic value well above their face value, according to The Plain Dealer.