Would you pay $60 for 50 pennies?

[tridim]

The power went out and I lost my channels on my TV tuner so I now have all the home shopping networks. Flipping by one I see they're selling 50 1955 pennies for $60, and people are actually buying them.

Why? :shrug:

[Neoma]

1. coin collectors

a weird hobby that wastes money for older money

[imenja]

3. 1955? You have to be a pretty stupid coin collector.

[Neoma]

5. well there you have it

some people are just stupid.

[jeff30997]

2. I don't get it...

:shrug:

[tridim]

4. I don't either

50 pennies are worth 50 cents, not $60.00 .

[jeff30997]

8. P.T Barnum was right :

A sucker is born every minute. But since his death,the birthrate of suckers have gone off the scale.

[CanuckAmok]

6. AFAIK it's the '43 Lincoln penny which is valuable...

But for the specific reason that they stopped making them, to conserve copper for the War Effort. There were only a few hundred released into public circulation.

Most copper coins aren't valuable beyond their face value. Even the copper in them isn't worth a whole cent.

[fnottr]

7. and there's the cool steel pennies from WWII

but they certainly aren't very valuable, it's just kinda a trip to see a penny done in steel.

[Up2Late]

9. The real Copper ones are

That's why they are only 5% Copper 95% Zinc now

Now find a 1974 Aluminum Penney, and you have something VERY Rare :hippie:

[soothsayer]

10. i once bought two pennies off of ebay for $199

The seller felt so bad for me (it was ridiculous----he listed the value at 2 cents---I was a young and impetuous ebayer back then, caught up in a bidding war) that he sent me some extra coins. I don't even know where the heck they are.

[mrbill]

11. circulated 1955-s lincolns were selling for $1.25 each in 1964.

Rolls of 50 1955-s Lincolns were going in the $50-60 range during the coin craze of the early sixties. Uncirculated rolls of 55-s cents were in the $100 range.

It was a whole lot like the beanie baby deal.

Life long collector here. Have spent years putting together a type-set of us coinage pre-1964.

Some coins are actually worth a lot of money and have historical and artistic merit. Large cents, two-cent pieces, buffalo nickels, standing liberty quarters, bust halves, morgan dollars and minnie more are good longterm investments.

Then there's the crap like rolls of 1955 pennies that they sell to dumbasses who think the price is going up, the speculative market.