A penny for your thoughts.

What's a penny really worth to you?

There has been talk about abolishing the penny. And, of course, much opposition.

How much of the tax payers hard earned pennies are you willing to waste to fight someone for your right to accumulate them? And as far as the Canadian Mint is concerned, the penny is the one coin that does not 'circulate'. People just don't spend them anymore. Aside from charitable

Personally, the only thing i use them for is to unplug the shop vac hose. When it stops sucking, I throw a handful of pennies down and it usually breaks up the blockage.

So, if they abolish the penny, what do I do (other than unblock the vacuum) with all those accumulated pennies?

Consider the copper content. If I were to melt down the pennies and take them to an exchange yard, what could I get for them?

Canadian pennies from 1996 and earlier – and U.S. ones from 1981 and earlier – are 98 per cent copper, veritable gold mines at today's prices. But you'd have to have quite a few to make this work.

A penny weighs 2.5 g. That means you would need 408,163 pre-1997 pennies to end up with a tonne of copper. As legal tender, this stash would be worth $4,081.63 but as a potential truckload of copper destined for China this would bring in US$7,230 just now on the LME futures market.

However, as long as they are legal tender, it is illegal to melt them.

Something to think about.