Copper Penny? -- NOT!

My husband and I were just thinking, "Hey, we've got all these pennies laying around. Let's gather 'em up, go the bank -- not to cash them in but to change dollars in for pennies, and go sell the copper to the highest bidder."


[Thanks to lemonde.fr/reuters/Christian Charisius for the photo.]

Well, that idea was short-lived. Turns out the US Mint beat us to it. They took all of the copper out of our pennies in 1983. See this chart for the evolutionary details of our beloved "copper" penny.

The joke's on us -- but I guess we knew that anyway. After all, gold was taken out of the dollar back in 1933.