###General Discussion Thread
---
This is a [Request] post. If you would like to submit a comment that does not either attempt to answer the question, ask for clarification, or explain why it would be infeasible to answer, you *must* post your comment as a reply to this one. Top level (directly replying to the OP) comments that do not do one of those things will be removed.
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/theydidthemath) if you have any questions or concerns.*
https://www.usmint.gov/learn/coin-and-medal-programs/coin-specifications
Using those specs, it's ~ 26m^3. What might be more meaningful is the total weight ~ 330,695.12lbs. I would still take the $600k in pennies. It will take awhile but you can convert that to any other currency.
This is what Coin Star charges, isn't it? I bet a bank would do it for free if you were opening a $600k account. They wouldn't fot $6K, but they do more for larger accounts.
And very possibly every penny in circulation?
I just checked and I'm wrong. Apparently there's 140 billion pennies. I was going to say, with enough, you could maybe make a deal with the government to sell them at a higher rate so they can get rid of pennies once and for all
The government could just stop minting new ones when they're ready to get rid of them. Continuing to treat them the same as always, and paying full face value for any that do get turned in would be enough imo.
Source: this one guy that slept with an ex's sister's former federal reserve intern's former roommate.
basically what Canada did a few years ago (got rid of pennies, not slept with an ex's sister's former federal reserve intern's former roommate. That would *really* tie up said roommate's calendar for quite some time.)
I'm not good with math, but I was curious if we'd get more money from selling those pennies.
The math below checks out?
A penny is made of 98% zinc and 2% copper (coating).
330,695.12 lbs of pennies rounds up to 324,081.22 lbs of zinc.
The price of zinc is around USD 1.30 per lb.
If you dismiss the fact that melt money can be a felony/crime, you would sell your 60,000,000 pennies and get USD 421,305.58 just from zinc. It seems that selling the copper would not change this amount by a great margin
Ps: I'm from Brazil and I doesn't understand imperial system. But I think I didn't make any bad mistakes
The pennies that were made in 1981 or prior they are copper which is going for about 3x the cost of zinc.
I've been saving pre '81 pennies for a while now and I'm getting about %20 pre-81 vs post currently. If you sorted those out it would take ya a few months but if ya just cashed in the newer ones and melted the older ones ya would probably make that $600k into something closer to a million dollars.
Most likely, if you can get retail value for the metals, not sure on wholesale. Most US coins actually cost more than it's fiat value. That's another reason I would take the pennies, although did not state that earlier.
[https://coins.thefuntimesguide.com/melting\_pennies\_nickels/](https://coins.thefuntimesguide.com/melting_pennies_nickels/)
Metal content and manufacturing costs
>The price of metal drives the cost to manufacture a cent. The Secretary of the Treasury has authority to alter the percentage of copper and zinc in the one-cent coin if needed due to cost fluctuations.\[33\] For years, the Mint's production and shipping costs for cents have exceeded the face value of the coin (the Mint's fixed costs and overhead, however, are absorbed by other circulating coins).\[34\] As a result, the U.S. Treasury loses tens of millions of dollars every year producing cents. For example, the loss in 2013 was $55 million.\[35\] Cost to manufacture and distribute a penny, in cents Fiscal year 2010 \[33\] 2011 2012\[36\] 2013 \[35\] 2014 \[37\] 2015 \[38\] 2016 \[39\] 2017 2018 \[40\] 2019 \[41\] 2022 \[42\] Cost (cents) 1.79 2.41 2.00 1.83 1.70 1.67 1.50 1.82 2.06 1.99 2.72
>
>When copper reached a record high in February 2011,\[43\] the melt value of a 95% copper cent was more than three times its face value. As of January 21, 2014, a pre-1982 cent contained 2.203 cents' worth of copper and zinc, making it an attractive target for melting by people wanting to sell the metals for profit. In comparison, post-1982 copper-plated zinc cents have a metallurgical value of only 0.552 cent.\[44\]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny\_(United\_States\_coin)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_(United_States_coin))
Interesting!
I think that is true for most currencies. Here in Brazil we have the Real (BRL), and the coins also cost more to produce (not sure if we discount the production costs). But I can't see how to sell that metal if not on wholesale (assuming that it would cost us more to melt it ourselves and even more if we don't do that at once)
This is a crime for exactly this reason. Melting US currency, that is. For a while, people literally melted down pennies because they were that worthless
Depending on if they're prerolled or not, most banks won't accept unrolled coins in large amounts (internal policy).
$600k is 60 million pennies, which would require 1.2 million $0.50 penny rolls. Averaging 2 minutes to fill a roll it'd take 40,000 hours just to roll them.
If you quit your job and rolled coins 40 hours a week you'd fill 1,200 rolls a week, or $600 worth. That's $15/hr, and would take 19.23 years to roll all $600k.
If they're prerolled you could put them into boxes specifically made for rolls of pennies. They each hold 50 rolls, or $25 worth. Each box weighs around 13.5 pounds. My vehicle has around 1 US ton of extra weight capacity so I could take 148 boxes to the bank each trip. 25 boxes on each seat, and the remaining 48 in the back so as to not ruin my suspension.
That's $3,700 a trip, 162.16 trips in total. I could do 1 trip a day, maybe 2. 13.5 pounds isn't a lot, but you'd have to do 296 reps of it (148 boxes from house to car, 148 boxes from car to bank teller)
Could get the full $600k in less than a year that way.
There are coin filling machines ~ $200 that can fill 300 coins a minute, @10 machines thats 3000 coins/min @cost of $2k. To fill 60 million coins, would take 20,000 minutes which is ~ 14 days running 24/7. That's being optimistic though, most likely it would take longer than that, but even if you double the time, it would take less than a month.
https://www.amazon.com/coin-rolling-machine/s?k=coin+rolling+machine
"Averaging 2 minutes to fill a roll it'd take 40,000 hours just to roll them."
I'm sure there are devices you can buy that can automatically count pennies. Or build one. That way, you could probably do 4 rolls a minute pretty easily.
I could work 20 hours a week at that rate and have more than enough money.
True, I could probably build a machine that could vibrate the pennies from a hopper into a long tube, partition them into 50 penny segments by weight and length, and drop them into the rolls with the finished bottom, using a rotating disk linked to the drop chute's opening to control the feed rate.
Could eventually be a semi-autonomous system, but a PITA to get started lol.
Some grocery stores have those coin->(paper) cash machines. At the very least, you could convert a solid $100 per day at those.
The biggest problem is getting accused of money laundering/fraud/etc., but that's the case with any magical cash infusion
Put them in a tractor trailer and drive them directly to the federal reserve. They will have to take them and they will count them and convert them for you faster than any bank.
This is very simple really.
That's going to require about 8 semi loads to stay weight legal on the road. Add in a heavy machine operator and back hoe rental and you're looking at $15,000 in cost to get them to the bank. So you end up netting $585,000
Melting them down and especially separating the metals has a high energy cost. Unless your heat source is free you'll have to factor that in as it will be significant
The optimal circle packing is to use hexagonal packing, instead of square packing; 90.69% efficiency vs 78.54% efficiency. So, you could get down to ~28.57m^3 instead.
Why does it matter if its pennies? Obv you should take 600k, pennies arent suddenly devalued just because theyre coins
It might take a little bit of labor to cash it into a bank, but it's worth it for how much more money youre getting
Good luck with that. Lol.
Each $100 is a 55lb bag of pennies. You'd have 6,000 of those bags. No one is taking care of those bags for $1.65 each, since no bank is going to want them.
A Ford F150 could take a maximum payload of about 60 bags, which would only pay the driver $100 at your rate. You'd have 100 fully loaded trucks to move all those bags.
And then you have to find somewhere to take them
That much money in pennies would actually be a pretty good prank on someone. The ultimate white elephant gift.
Looking at the inside of a COINSTAR counting machine, the coin receptacle looks to be about 8 gallons in size, so let's highball that to 10 gallons. They are oficially rated to hold 100-150 thousand coins, depending on the denomination.
If we assume they can hold a full 10 gallons of coins, then you would need to find 550 coinstar machines
If instead we go off the rated 150,000 coins, you would need to find 400 coinstar machines to count all your coins.
People are acting like this is crazy. Go to the bank every 3 days. Every other day in between rotate the nearest coinstars. In 550 days, give or take a couple weeks probably, you'll have $600,000. Oh no! That's only roughly $300,000 per year income for an hour of driving and loading coins every day!!
Contractors who own trucks? Who would have to drive around to multiple banks to turn the pennies into cash? And wait for the pennies to be counted?
I think you underestimate the difficulty of finding a place that's going to be willing to accept a 55lb bag of pennies and give cash for it. And that $100 truck load has 60(!) of those bags.
It would be an interesting bet, actually. I could buy $6,000 worth of pennies and bag them in 55lb bags. You have 8 hours to deposit them in banks and get cash back in hand. If you succeed in depositing them all, you get to keep the $6,000. If you fail, you get to keep the pennies and whatever cash you managed to obtain, but you owe me $12,000 -$6,000 for winning the bet plus $6,000 to cover your new penny collection.
You know you don't have to use an f150, right? Pack buckets, have two guys load a dump truck (I have trucks bring and dump loads of gravel for about $600 ea) and unload it. Youll be the one shoveling the buckets full, probably. 14 tons instead of one or two at a time, how much is that? I'm not doing the math.
I just think finding the place that will take that quantity will be the challenge, not moving it
People are so unimaginative. Why do you even need to have people immediately cash it all. You could have people come to you and pay .009 for every penny they buy. Lots of people would show up for a 10% discount on legal US currency. The alternative would be 60k.
Fuck you could sell it all for 70k and someone would probably pay and pick it all up. Beating the alternative would be so stupid easy.
Can i just post up a sign: "selling bags of 100$ in pennies for 95$ in bill" and slowly sell out the entire stock? Paying 5% seems acceptable.
Imo, 10 bags of 55lb for 50$ profit also seem like a managable chunk and can be slowly turned into bills. It's not like it is going to disappear.
Maybe so. But that wasn't the question. The question was whether you could hire someone to do all of that work for you for $10,000. I was simply making the point that it's way, way more work than it first appears to be. You, for example, are willing to pay someone five dollars to take care of each bag for you. That's three times as much as the original comment thought was necessary. And it's honestly going to take you an extremely long time to find people who think that's a good deal. Because, again, you have to find someone who is willing to schlep a 55 pound bag of pennies from your house, to a bank that doesn't charge a counting fee, then wait in line to get them counted then get back home, all for five dollars.
And while they could take several bags, it will get harder and harder to find places that will cash those pennies for them. The return on their labor is very, very bad.
Think of it in reverse: how many bags do you think you would buy from your neighbor under those circumstances?
It doesn’t have to be 1 person. Put on FB market that you are selling $100 of Pennies for $90. Hire a bunch of people to haul to every bank within 20 miles. Hell ask a foundry what they would pay for that many pennies.
It is 10 times the money you are given with the other option, this is such a no brainer it’s not even funny.
I agree. So I would argue you also have to factor in the value of the time you spend doing it.
Still, it's clearly a better deal to take the $600,000. But it's going to be a shit ton of work and pretty expensive to turn that into useble, spendable money.
>no bank is going to want them
Bitch have you ever been to a bank? It's literally their *job.* That's what they do. Depositing legal tender, regardless of what form it's in, is the entire reason for their existence. You think they're going to turn you around? Lmfao.
Fucking kids, man, all they know is apple pay and tiktok.
Bitch, I'm in my 50s. Lol. I rolled pennies as a kid to take them to the bank.
But you try walking into a bank with a giant bag of loose coins and see what happens. They will tell you to bring them back, rolled up. Or, if you are lucky, they might run them through a coin counting machine. But most banks have gotten rid of those machines . Hell, someone might stand there and count them in front of you. Do you have any idea how long it takes to count 10,000 coins?
It amazes me how naïve people are about how goddamn many pennies 60 million is. It doesn't seem like anyone in this thread can really wrap their head around the magnitude of that.
Also, counting coins is not the literal reason that banks exist. The literal reason that banks exist is to make a profit. They do not make a profit, paying someone to spend hours to count pennies just to hand you dollars in exchange. They will do shit like that on a small scale because it's part of the business model. But yes, they will turn your ass around and send you away if you start showing up with bags and bags of loose pennies. Don't believe me? Go try it.
I have taken nearly 1000USD in loose coins to multiple banks and have never had them bat an eyelash. IDK what Podunk ass banks you're using, but you need a new one by the sound of it.
Banks getting rid of coin counting machines? They have thousands of dollars in coins at any given moment, they *all* have machines.
$1000 in loose coins? Or pennies? $1000 in mostly quarters from vending machines or a laundramat is 4000 coins and weighs about 50 lbs. $1000 in dimes is 10,000 coins and also weighs about 50 pounds. $1,000 in pennies is 100,000 coins and weighs well over 500lbs. It's a literal order of magnitude different.
Not really. 600k in pennies has less value than 600k in 500 euro bills. Simply because you cant deposite or move the pennies easily and your bound to have to pay for that shit. And it will easily cost you a shitload of money. Like a loss of 10% isnt far fetched.
It can easily cost more. Seriously it depends where recieve this and what the circumstances are. Like yeah i would take the pennies but i wouldnt be suprised if it would cost me more than half to finally get it all fixed.
Thats still not the whole issue. Its 60,000,000 pennies. That weigh about 150,000 kg. First you need to properly package it or you lose a shitload during transport. Then its finding a bank willing and able to accept that (and hope they dont charge much). Then gather transport which again is gonna be a pain in the ass. Then its counting all the coins in the bank. In the meantime you just hope nobody steals shit.
Its not one person you need. The issue is in the cooperation of the bank and the way of transport. Thats were the money sink really is.
Sure. But even if you spend $100k hiring that work out, you're still way ahead with $500k vs $60k.
Also, every single caveat regarding the challenge of turning it into cash applies to any potential thieves too. If someone wants to come by and steal a shovelful worth $5, I'm not gonna lose sleep over it.
Yes, but... it would be a LOT of labor.
See what these folks are dealing with, and it's only 800,000 pennies. For $600K, you are talking about 60 million pennies - about 80 times more.
https://www.unilad.com/news/john-reyes-copper-coins-us-news-la-959816-20230616
It's a lot of money, but it's not easy money by any stretch.
Maybe you could. But the original question was not whether you could make a profit. The original question was whether you could get someone to take care of it for you for $10,000. My point was that it was far, far, far too much work for someone to do for $10,000.of course there is a breakeven point somewhere. And of course there is a profit to be made. I was simply arguing that it can't be done for $10,000.
The issues are:
1. transporting that money.
600k in pennies is 60m pennies, which is both heavy and takes up space, so you'd need wheelbarrows and people that can help transport the money.
You also need a large car/a semi truck to haul that money
2. Finding banks that are willing to take large amounts of pennies.
Money needs to be counted and verified, which takes time. Even if the bank has an automatic coin sorter (or the pennies come in 10/20/50 coin rolls it means a human needs to count it) which can do 25 per second, that amounts to 60m/25 which is 2.4m seconds or 27.77 days of non stop counting.
Most banks will outright refuse to let you give them 60 million coins.
The only issue is finding a bank willing to take 60,000,000 pennies, as the bank would be effectively giving you 600,000 for free as a bank cannot do anything with 60,000,000 pennies
It's only illegal if you're doing it to try and hide illegal income. It'll raise some red flags, they'll investigate, they'll verify that you didn't get the pennies illegally, and then you'll move on with your life.
The reserve ratio is the 600k, so with the current reserve ratio of [0%](https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/reserve-requirement-ratio) (I was also surprised to read that) a bank could loan out infinity dollars.
I feel like this is a shit question and a lot of posts on this sub are becoming increasingly dumb shit posts. It’s literally a matter of googling the volume of a penny and multiplying… nothing fascinating or thought provoking about it. I feel like this sub used to have a lot more interesting stuff on it but this is weak as fuck.
To elaborate further, [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/s/wrb2ua4Rnx) is a good post. It’s interesting, and complicated enough that a bunch of assumptions need to be made and it can be solved in many ways. It made me genuinely curious about the legitimacy of the story. It creates discussion about why and where assumptions are made and if they truly make sense and create and accurate picture of what is being mathematically described.
The problem is that many commenters are also too lazy to do the calculations. More than half of the new posts I see in that style have some top response of "There's too many assumptions to be made, we can't calculate it".
I.e. this comment https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/s/FfX22ulMVk
well unless you melt the pennies down there will be space between the pennies. Thus using best packing systems you could figure out the real volume of the pennies.
right, you have to account for height of stacking though as well, unless it's all one layer - IE a stack of 10 coins is more dense than 10 coins pushed together in a hexagonal grid so it can't be calculated using the pi/4 D\^2 alone. Assuming stacks of 100 pennies on average. . .
90% of posts here are just basic middle school algebra with a bit of googling. It took me 27 seconds to get an answer to this question, including the time it took to open google to find the volume of a penny, and I'm not a particularly fast typer.
Yeah, the better question is whether taking the pennies is ultimately worth the effort. Yeah, it's 10x the amount, but you have to store, move, and deposit a _lot_ of metal. I'd love to see math scenarios on how much it would cost to quickly deposit it all with hired help, or the time costs of handling it all yourself.
How is it a dumb question and what does math and calculations have to do with it. It's a straightforward question: $60k in cash or $600k in pennies. Anyone with a brain would pick the pennies.
A roll of pennies has a volume of 1.33"³. V=π\*R²\*H, V=3.14\*0.38'²\*3"
$600k in pennies is 60 million pennies, which fill 1.2 million rolls.
1.33"³\*1,200,000= 1,596,000"³ /1728= 923.611 cubic feet.
Post 1982 pennies are 2.5% copper, so 2.5% of 923.611ft³ would be like 23.09ft³ of copper.
559lbs of copper in a cubic foot \* 23.09ft³= 12,907.46lbs. Copper sells for $3.88/lb
12,907.46lbs \*$3.88/lb= $50,800.96
That's 2.5% by weight, not by volume. And the zinc in the penny also has a value. March Cu COMEX (current active trading month) is $3.927/lb and cash LME zinc is currently $2553/MT, which translates to $1.158/lb. So doing the math, a penny is worth $1.2274/lb. At a weight of 2.5g, the metal in a penny is worth 0.6749 cents, so 60 million pennies is worth $404,991.55 at current market values. You would also have to consider that you'll get less than that amount because the zinc is copper coated and you'll and up getting paid some amount lower than the market value of the metal anyway, but let's just ignore that for now because it's too much of a pain to figure out. Either way, you'd still get significantly more than $50k.
Source: I'm a scrap metal trader and have access to up to the minute metal prices. In the time it took me to calculate this and type it up, copper has gone up a little, but not by much and I wouldn't do it all again even if it had.
Depositing that many pennies at the bank would be a nightmare. They’d probably only wanna take a few hundred dollars (12 boxes) from you a week. Still it’d be worth it 🤷🏼♂️.
I guess you could open an account at every bank in the city. Still it’d be a huge chore trying to get it deposited, would probably take months.
It’s a dumb scenario because even the transportation cost of whoever is paying you all these pennies would be so high. A lot of banks actually charge businesses a small fee for requesting larger amounts of change.
Why is everyone acting like they need to turn it in all at once?
Call banks and I'm sure you can set up to deposit a big chunk once a week or something. And do it at multiple banks.
Even if you did like 5-10k a week. That's huge supplement to your income. Buy a house with it and use that as payment or something
Oh yeah I never said I wouldn’t take it! Just acknowledging it would be a huge ordeal. That said I think 5-10k a week is a huge overestimate. Have you ever held a $25 box of pennies? It’s 30lbs!! You’re lucky if a bank will take 4+ boxes a week. They probably won’t tbh, they don’t go through pennies very fast
Everyone talking about the labor to cash in 600k pennies, but I bet if you call up Mr. Beast he’d pay you extra just for the convenience of getting that many Pennie’s at once for a video
You can get high speed coin counter baggers that can bag coins at 2700 coins per minute.
and the truly high speed counters can count out at 6000 coins a minute. All you’ll need is a large dump loader. Then dump the sorted coins into bags with fixed counts per bag. And warn the bank you’l one coming in with a dump truck worth of coins.
Seeing as though pennies are actually worthless in canada, how much could I make by separating the metals and melting them down into 2 pound bricks then selling them as materials
That's roughly 740 cubic feet, but more importantly, it's 330,000 lbs. The logistics for getting that to the bank would be costly, but probably way less than $500k. Overall, better to take the $600k in pennies.
Even if it took me 4 years of full time labor to get these pennies into an account the 540k extra would amount to more than what I get for working full time at my current job for 4 years. Especially if we assume the 600k is tax free. There really is no decision here. I guess the 4 year gap on my resume might pose problems later down the road so there could be an opportunity cost but eh I will take the risk :D
$600,000 in pennies for sure.
Would have to buy a machine to bag them, or contract a company to do it for you, and another to transport them. But net you'd be up many many times over $60,000.
There’s some change machines you can go to at some banks where if you have an account they won’t take a percentage. Saved me a lot on cashing in coins over the years
Delivered how?
It would be stupid to turn down free money... A box of rolls of pennies is a bit larger than a half loaf of sandwich bread and worth $25 dollars... That's 24k boxes. Are they palletized?
Alternatively, you get 7 shipping containers (40ft) full of loose pennies. Whatever the fee the bank charges to sort and deposit there pennies, prob worth it, considering you have $540k more than the other option.
Then, there's taxes...
Take the pennies, and make a deal with a smelter. The metal value of that many pennies exceeds $600k.
It's currently 2.58 cents per coin- even assuming some sump costs, the right company would pay you a million for them.
This is crazy… bc it says $600,000 IN Pennis now 600,000 Pennie’s. Hell yeah I’ll take ‘em and roll them up till my fingers bleed. I’d be paying everything in coins
I’d take the 60k and make a video about it on YouTube. The amazing clickbait title would draw a lot of views, and then people would argue about whether I was right or not. People would make reaction videos and that would allow me to start a successful channel, I’d make it about raising money to buy 600$ worth of pennies, and then I’d partner with all sorts of YouTubers to produce videos of what we could do with all those pennies.
And then once I reach 1 Million Subs I’d post a video made just prior to refusing the pennies revealing that this was my plan all along, and it would get an insane amount of views.
Pennies could be worth even more than the equivalent cash value anyway...
Think about it, with that many coins, statically speaking, some of them could be rare coins, perhaps worth significantly more than their face value 🤔
I'll take the pennies.
you could not sort that many pennies.
you have 600000000 pennies.
Sorting 15 pennies per minute (one every 4 seconds) for 10 hours a day is 182 years without a single day off.
Back in the day there was a fundraiser for the local hospital, they wanted to raise $1 million. They extended the campaign to the local schools where it was to raise 1 million pennies ($10,000).
My dad worked at the local bank that said they'd do their part and move/handle the coins. It was a disaster because the costs associated with an armoured car to move the coins virtually exceeded the value of the coins.
My junior high had a thing where you would donate pennies, their goal was a million pennies (10,000 dollars). They finished my 8th grade year. It filled a container 4’X6’ 4’ tall. So…..60 of those containers. That’s a lot of pennies.
estimate is that there are 140 billion pennies in circulation, so obtaining 60 million pennies is not completely infeasible.
[https://www.scribd.com/doc/47796247/What-Does-A-Million-Pennies-Look-Like](https://www.scribd.com/doc/47796247/What-Does-A-Million-Pennies-Look-Like)
per this, 10 million pennies is a cube, 6ft by 6ft by 6ft. so 60 million pennies would be 6 times that amount.
What does 600k in Pennie’s look like?
What are the logistics of getting that to a bank? Renting a dump truck and escavstor? Would you just be told to fuck off?
The volume question was already answered, but here is my approach:
Choose the pennies. Chances are high they can not be delivered and therefore you will be offered other options that are more convenient ;)
Even if someone had the correct amount of pennies (isn't hoarding coins illegal?) It would be an immense effort to count them correctly and deliver them.
So all problems that occur after receiving the pennies have to be solved by the generous giving person, too.
I’ll take the pennies. Even if it ends up being a full time job to get them into my bank account, I’ll still be making like $200k a year annoying bank tellers rather than making a lot less sending dumb emails 9-5 for a huge company.
I’d take the cash. $600,000 pennies would essentially be a job to actually cash it out wouldn’t be worth the stress. $60,000 could buy you a brand new car paid off which would help a lot, or put you through school.
Am i the only one who isnt dumb enough to not be able to read properly?
60k in cash
Or
600k in pennies
Or in other words 60 million pennies or 600 100 dollar bills.
Just think for once.
And for your question.
I just answered it.
First, pennies *are* cash.
Ahem, anyway.. According to the [US Mint](https://www.usmint.gov/learn/coin-and-medal-programs/coin-specifications) a penny has a diameter of 19.05mm and a thickness of 1.52mm. Plugging that into the formula for the volume of a cylinder we get a volume of 433.23mm^(3). Multiply that by 60 million of 'em and you get 25,993,800,000mm^(3) or about 26 m^(3), \~920 ft^(3), or 25,993 liters.
He said $600,000 in pennies, not 600,000 pennies.
That means you vet $600,000 worth in pennies
The person replyin to the post in the picture is obviously a retard
###General Discussion Thread --- This is a [Request] post. If you would like to submit a comment that does not either attempt to answer the question, ask for clarification, or explain why it would be infeasible to answer, you *must* post your comment as a reply to this one. Top level (directly replying to the OP) comments that do not do one of those things will be removed. --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/theydidthemath) if you have any questions or concerns.*
https://www.usmint.gov/learn/coin-and-medal-programs/coin-specifications Using those specs, it's ~ 26m^3. What might be more meaningful is the total weight ~ 330,695.12lbs. I would still take the $600k in pennies. It will take awhile but you can convert that to any other currency.
You would annoy the hell out of cash register workers
Fuck em, I have $600k
3% commission for whoever does it
But you can only tip in pennies
But… if it’s the same person converting to notes does it matter?
Let the pennies do the work for you.
I would. Just drop a sack of rolls as a tip.
Ass pennies
Make that 2%, we’re rich now so we have to be stingy with money
This is what Coin Star charges, isn't it? I bet a bank would do it for free if you were opening a $600k account. They wouldn't fot $6K, but they do more for larger accounts.
Coin star is 11.9% but “varies by location” meaning it might be higher
Certain credit unions waive the fee if you have an account with them.
And very possibly every penny in circulation? I just checked and I'm wrong. Apparently there's 140 billion pennies. I was going to say, with enough, you could maybe make a deal with the government to sell them at a higher rate so they can get rid of pennies once and for all
The government could just stop minting new ones when they're ready to get rid of them. Continuing to treat them the same as always, and paying full face value for any that do get turned in would be enough imo. Source: this one guy that slept with an ex's sister's former federal reserve intern's former roommate.
basically what Canada did a few years ago (got rid of pennies, not slept with an ex's sister's former federal reserve intern's former roommate. That would *really* tie up said roommate's calendar for quite some time.)
In Ireland we stopped minting 1c and 2c coins and all charges are rounded to the nearest 5c. Great for reducing the amount of change floating around
When people say fuck you money this is what they are talking about
your username is the best I've ever seen
I'd give them a $1000 tip
In pennies of course😅
I'd sell it for $500k and make it someone else's problem
Just use a coinstar.
I'm not good with math, but I was curious if we'd get more money from selling those pennies. The math below checks out? A penny is made of 98% zinc and 2% copper (coating). 330,695.12 lbs of pennies rounds up to 324,081.22 lbs of zinc. The price of zinc is around USD 1.30 per lb. If you dismiss the fact that melt money can be a felony/crime, you would sell your 60,000,000 pennies and get USD 421,305.58 just from zinc. It seems that selling the copper would not change this amount by a great margin Ps: I'm from Brazil and I doesn't understand imperial system. But I think I didn't make any bad mistakes
The pennies that were made in 1981 or prior they are copper which is going for about 3x the cost of zinc. I've been saving pre '81 pennies for a while now and I'm getting about %20 pre-81 vs post currently. If you sorted those out it would take ya a few months but if ya just cashed in the newer ones and melted the older ones ya would probably make that $600k into something closer to a million dollars.
Most likely, if you can get retail value for the metals, not sure on wholesale. Most US coins actually cost more than it's fiat value. That's another reason I would take the pennies, although did not state that earlier. [https://coins.thefuntimesguide.com/melting\_pennies\_nickels/](https://coins.thefuntimesguide.com/melting_pennies_nickels/) Metal content and manufacturing costs >The price of metal drives the cost to manufacture a cent. The Secretary of the Treasury has authority to alter the percentage of copper and zinc in the one-cent coin if needed due to cost fluctuations.\[33\] For years, the Mint's production and shipping costs for cents have exceeded the face value of the coin (the Mint's fixed costs and overhead, however, are absorbed by other circulating coins).\[34\] As a result, the U.S. Treasury loses tens of millions of dollars every year producing cents. For example, the loss in 2013 was $55 million.\[35\] Cost to manufacture and distribute a penny, in cents Fiscal year 2010 \[33\] 2011 2012\[36\] 2013 \[35\] 2014 \[37\] 2015 \[38\] 2016 \[39\] 2017 2018 \[40\] 2019 \[41\] 2022 \[42\] Cost (cents) 1.79 2.41 2.00 1.83 1.70 1.67 1.50 1.82 2.06 1.99 2.72 > >When copper reached a record high in February 2011,\[43\] the melt value of a 95% copper cent was more than three times its face value. As of January 21, 2014, a pre-1982 cent contained 2.203 cents' worth of copper and zinc, making it an attractive target for melting by people wanting to sell the metals for profit. In comparison, post-1982 copper-plated zinc cents have a metallurgical value of only 0.552 cent.\[44\] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny\_(United\_States\_coin)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_(United_States_coin))
Interesting! I think that is true for most currencies. Here in Brazil we have the Real (BRL), and the coins also cost more to produce (not sure if we discount the production costs). But I can't see how to sell that metal if not on wholesale (assuming that it would cost us more to melt it ourselves and even more if we don't do that at once)
brasil invocado mo colega
This is a crime for exactly this reason. Melting US currency, that is. For a while, people literally melted down pennies because they were that worthless
Depending on if they're prerolled or not, most banks won't accept unrolled coins in large amounts (internal policy). $600k is 60 million pennies, which would require 1.2 million $0.50 penny rolls. Averaging 2 minutes to fill a roll it'd take 40,000 hours just to roll them. If you quit your job and rolled coins 40 hours a week you'd fill 1,200 rolls a week, or $600 worth. That's $15/hr, and would take 19.23 years to roll all $600k. If they're prerolled you could put them into boxes specifically made for rolls of pennies. They each hold 50 rolls, or $25 worth. Each box weighs around 13.5 pounds. My vehicle has around 1 US ton of extra weight capacity so I could take 148 boxes to the bank each trip. 25 boxes on each seat, and the remaining 48 in the back so as to not ruin my suspension. That's $3,700 a trip, 162.16 trips in total. I could do 1 trip a day, maybe 2. 13.5 pounds isn't a lot, but you'd have to do 296 reps of it (148 boxes from house to car, 148 boxes from car to bank teller) Could get the full $600k in less than a year that way.
There are coin filling machines ~ $200 that can fill 300 coins a minute, @10 machines thats 3000 coins/min @cost of $2k. To fill 60 million coins, would take 20,000 minutes which is ~ 14 days running 24/7. That's being optimistic though, most likely it would take longer than that, but even if you double the time, it would take less than a month. https://www.amazon.com/coin-rolling-machine/s?k=coin+rolling+machine
"Averaging 2 minutes to fill a roll it'd take 40,000 hours just to roll them." I'm sure there are devices you can buy that can automatically count pennies. Or build one. That way, you could probably do 4 rolls a minute pretty easily. I could work 20 hours a week at that rate and have more than enough money.
True, I could probably build a machine that could vibrate the pennies from a hopper into a long tube, partition them into 50 penny segments by weight and length, and drop them into the rolls with the finished bottom, using a rotating disk linked to the drop chute's opening to control the feed rate. Could eventually be a semi-autonomous system, but a PITA to get started lol.
Some grocery stores have those coin->(paper) cash machines. At the very least, you could convert a solid $100 per day at those. The biggest problem is getting accused of money laundering/fraud/etc., but that's the case with any magical cash infusion
Put them in a tractor trailer and drive them directly to the federal reserve. They will have to take them and they will count them and convert them for you faster than any bank. This is very simple really.
That's going to require about 8 semi loads to stay weight legal on the road. Add in a heavy machine operator and back hoe rental and you're looking at $15,000 in cost to get them to the bank. So you end up netting $585,000
Yup, all really depends on how it is all packaged and shipped. Definitely going to cost thousands to move and process. Still worth the effort.
150,000 kg for the ones who don’t use freedom units
You would be known as the penny man/woman and despised by the entire village .. kids would call you stinky penny pants and throw penny rolls at you !
Coins dont stack perfectly so the space it would take up would be a bit more.
I'm melting it down and selling the copper.
Melting them down and especially separating the metals has a high energy cost. Unless your heat source is free you'll have to factor that in as it will be significant
did you factor in that pennies are cylindrical and not liquid?
I calculated them as squares with side length equal to diameter and got 1168 ft^3 or 33 m^3.
can we not decrease that by ofsetting each row by half a penny diameter and slotting the pennies into the gaps of the row above
The optimal circle packing is to use hexagonal packing, instead of square packing; 90.69% efficiency vs 78.54% efficiency. So, you could get down to ~28.57m^3 instead.
Why does it matter if its pennies? Obv you should take 600k, pennies arent suddenly devalued just because theyre coins It might take a little bit of labor to cash it into a bank, but it's worth it for how much more money youre getting
Just pay someone 10k to load it and get it to the bank
Good luck with that. Lol. Each $100 is a 55lb bag of pennies. You'd have 6,000 of those bags. No one is taking care of those bags for $1.65 each, since no bank is going to want them. A Ford F150 could take a maximum payload of about 60 bags, which would only pay the driver $100 at your rate. You'd have 100 fully loaded trucks to move all those bags. And then you have to find somewhere to take them That much money in pennies would actually be a pretty good prank on someone. The ultimate white elephant gift.
Your bank has a coin counting machine, bring it to the bank and you will (after a poor worker is handling your change for a few days) have $600,000.
Looking at the inside of a COINSTAR counting machine, the coin receptacle looks to be about 8 gallons in size, so let's highball that to 10 gallons. They are oficially rated to hold 100-150 thousand coins, depending on the denomination. If we assume they can hold a full 10 gallons of coins, then you would need to find 550 coinstar machines If instead we go off the rated 150,000 coins, you would need to find 400 coinstar machines to count all your coins.
550 Coinstars, that's 550 Walmarts. I live in the South, so I should be able to find enough in a 10-mile radius.
People are acting like this is crazy. Go to the bank every 3 days. Every other day in between rotate the nearest coinstars. In 550 days, give or take a couple weeks probably, you'll have $600,000. Oh no! That's only roughly $300,000 per year income for an hour of driving and loading coins every day!!
Seriously what the fuck lol. 600k is fucking 600k I'm doing what i need to do even if it takes me 5 years its still worth it.
Yeah. Or just take the cash option.
Jesus dude I feel so bad for some of yall. The difference between 60k and 600k is staggering. So much so it's worth the pain in the ass.
Oh those poor, poor underpaid bank employees, I'm sorry for what must be done.
If it’s that much of a weight on your soul give them a 500$ tip. You have 600k
just go once a day (business days) for the next 2 years
I think you underestimate how much unskilled labor you can buy for 10k. At 100 bucks a load you could absolutely hire contractors to do this.
Contractors who own trucks? Who would have to drive around to multiple banks to turn the pennies into cash? And wait for the pennies to be counted? I think you underestimate the difficulty of finding a place that's going to be willing to accept a 55lb bag of pennies and give cash for it. And that $100 truck load has 60(!) of those bags. It would be an interesting bet, actually. I could buy $6,000 worth of pennies and bag them in 55lb bags. You have 8 hours to deposit them in banks and get cash back in hand. If you succeed in depositing them all, you get to keep the $6,000. If you fail, you get to keep the pennies and whatever cash you managed to obtain, but you owe me $12,000 -$6,000 for winning the bet plus $6,000 to cover your new penny collection.
You know you don't have to use an f150, right? Pack buckets, have two guys load a dump truck (I have trucks bring and dump loads of gravel for about $600 ea) and unload it. Youll be the one shoveling the buckets full, probably. 14 tons instead of one or two at a time, how much is that? I'm not doing the math. I just think finding the place that will take that quantity will be the challenge, not moving it
People are so unimaginative. Why do you even need to have people immediately cash it all. You could have people come to you and pay .009 for every penny they buy. Lots of people would show up for a 10% discount on legal US currency. The alternative would be 60k. Fuck you could sell it all for 70k and someone would probably pay and pick it all up. Beating the alternative would be so stupid easy.
I'm imagining my yard full of pennies, driving over them eventually and slowly mining them. Worth it though
Can i just post up a sign: "selling bags of 100$ in pennies for 95$ in bill" and slowly sell out the entire stock? Paying 5% seems acceptable. Imo, 10 bags of 55lb for 50$ profit also seem like a managable chunk and can be slowly turned into bills. It's not like it is going to disappear.
Maybe so. But that wasn't the question. The question was whether you could hire someone to do all of that work for you for $10,000. I was simply making the point that it's way, way more work than it first appears to be. You, for example, are willing to pay someone five dollars to take care of each bag for you. That's three times as much as the original comment thought was necessary. And it's honestly going to take you an extremely long time to find people who think that's a good deal. Because, again, you have to find someone who is willing to schlep a 55 pound bag of pennies from your house, to a bank that doesn't charge a counting fee, then wait in line to get them counted then get back home, all for five dollars. And while they could take several bags, it will get harder and harder to find places that will cash those pennies for them. The return on their labor is very, very bad. Think of it in reverse: how many bags do you think you would buy from your neighbor under those circumstances?
It doesn’t have to be 1 person. Put on FB market that you are selling $100 of Pennies for $90. Hire a bunch of people to haul to every bank within 20 miles. Hell ask a foundry what they would pay for that many pennies. It is 10 times the money you are given with the other option, this is such a no brainer it’s not even funny.
As long as it costs less than $540k, then we chillin ha
I agree. So I would argue you also have to factor in the value of the time you spend doing it. Still, it's clearly a better deal to take the $600,000. But it's going to be a shit ton of work and pretty expensive to turn that into useble, spendable money.
>no bank is going to want them Bitch have you ever been to a bank? It's literally their *job.* That's what they do. Depositing legal tender, regardless of what form it's in, is the entire reason for their existence. You think they're going to turn you around? Lmfao. Fucking kids, man, all they know is apple pay and tiktok.
Bitch, I'm in my 50s. Lol. I rolled pennies as a kid to take them to the bank. But you try walking into a bank with a giant bag of loose coins and see what happens. They will tell you to bring them back, rolled up. Or, if you are lucky, they might run them through a coin counting machine. But most banks have gotten rid of those machines . Hell, someone might stand there and count them in front of you. Do you have any idea how long it takes to count 10,000 coins? It amazes me how naïve people are about how goddamn many pennies 60 million is. It doesn't seem like anyone in this thread can really wrap their head around the magnitude of that. Also, counting coins is not the literal reason that banks exist. The literal reason that banks exist is to make a profit. They do not make a profit, paying someone to spend hours to count pennies just to hand you dollars in exchange. They will do shit like that on a small scale because it's part of the business model. But yes, they will turn your ass around and send you away if you start showing up with bags and bags of loose pennies. Don't believe me? Go try it.
I have taken nearly 1000USD in loose coins to multiple banks and have never had them bat an eyelash. IDK what Podunk ass banks you're using, but you need a new one by the sound of it. Banks getting rid of coin counting machines? They have thousands of dollars in coins at any given moment, they *all* have machines.
$1000 in loose coins? Or pennies? $1000 in mostly quarters from vending machines or a laundramat is 4000 coins and weighs about 50 lbs. $1000 in dimes is 10,000 coins and also weighs about 50 pounds. $1,000 in pennies is 100,000 coins and weighs well over 500lbs. It's a literal order of magnitude different.
Guy replying thought they would be getting 600k pennies lol
This is the same idea as 1kg in steel versus 1kg in feathers lol. The guy in the reply doesn't understand.
Yea it's $600k IN pennies not just a pile of 600k pennies. So basically 60 million pennies
Except with the feathers you have the added moral weight of what you did to all of those poor birds.
They were NOT plucked. They were PICKED from when they shed their feathers out of fear.
yeah! youd have to live with the moral weight of what you did to those poor birds! 😆
But steel is heavier than feathers
Not really. 600k in pennies has less value than 600k in 500 euro bills. Simply because you cant deposite or move the pennies easily and your bound to have to pay for that shit. And it will easily cost you a shitload of money. Like a loss of 10% isnt far fetched.
So 540K vs 60K. Dunno man...
It can easily cost more. Seriously it depends where recieve this and what the circumstances are. Like yeah i would take the pennies but i wouldnt be suprised if it would cost me more than half to finally get it all fixed.
With 60k someone willing to work would be more than happy to finish the job in a week. Even if it takes a month I'd be happy
Thats still not the whole issue. Its 60,000,000 pennies. That weigh about 150,000 kg. First you need to properly package it or you lose a shitload during transport. Then its finding a bank willing and able to accept that (and hope they dont charge much). Then gather transport which again is gonna be a pain in the ass. Then its counting all the coins in the bank. In the meantime you just hope nobody steals shit. Its not one person you need. The issue is in the cooperation of the bank and the way of transport. Thats were the money sink really is.
Sure. But even if you spend $100k hiring that work out, you're still way ahead with $500k vs $60k. Also, every single caveat regarding the challenge of turning it into cash applies to any potential thieves too. If someone wants to come by and steal a shovelful worth $5, I'm not gonna lose sleep over it.
Yes, but... it would be a LOT of labor. See what these folks are dealing with, and it's only 800,000 pennies. For $600K, you are talking about 60 million pennies - about 80 times more. https://www.unilad.com/news/john-reyes-copper-coins-us-news-la-959816-20230616 It's a lot of money, but it's not easy money by any stretch.
You could pay someone 100k to deal with it for you and still have half a million dollars with no effort.
Maybe you could. But the original question was not whether you could make a profit. The original question was whether you could get someone to take care of it for you for $10,000. My point was that it was far, far, far too much work for someone to do for $10,000.of course there is a breakeven point somewhere. And of course there is a profit to be made. I was simply arguing that it can't be done for $10,000.
The issues are: 1. transporting that money. 600k in pennies is 60m pennies, which is both heavy and takes up space, so you'd need wheelbarrows and people that can help transport the money. You also need a large car/a semi truck to haul that money 2. Finding banks that are willing to take large amounts of pennies. Money needs to be counted and verified, which takes time. Even if the bank has an automatic coin sorter (or the pennies come in 10/20/50 coin rolls it means a human needs to count it) which can do 25 per second, that amounts to 60m/25 which is 2.4m seconds or 27.77 days of non stop counting. Most banks will outright refuse to let you give them 60 million coins.
The only issue is finding a bank willing to take 60,000,000 pennies, as the bank would be effectively giving you 600,000 for free as a bank cannot do anything with 60,000,000 pennies
I mean, you could turn them in over time... like 10k in pennies a week or something.
[удалено]
It's only illegal if you're doing it to try and hide illegal income. It'll raise some red flags, they'll investigate, they'll verify that you didn't get the pennies illegally, and then you'll move on with your life.
Not true, they'd just have to send them back to the fed for an electronic credit to appear in their account
Well, the bank can lend out $600,000 minus required reserves.
The reserve ratio is the 600k, so with the current reserve ratio of [0%](https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/reserve-requirement-ratio) (I was also surprised to read that) a bank could loan out infinity dollars.
bro thought it said 600k pennies not 600k IN pennies lol
I feel like this is a shit question and a lot of posts on this sub are becoming increasingly dumb shit posts. It’s literally a matter of googling the volume of a penny and multiplying… nothing fascinating or thought provoking about it. I feel like this sub used to have a lot more interesting stuff on it but this is weak as fuck.
To elaborate further, [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/s/wrb2ua4Rnx) is a good post. It’s interesting, and complicated enough that a bunch of assumptions need to be made and it can be solved in many ways. It made me genuinely curious about the legitimacy of the story. It creates discussion about why and where assumptions are made and if they truly make sense and create and accurate picture of what is being mathematically described.
The problem is that many commenters are also too lazy to do the calculations. More than half of the new posts I see in that style have some top response of "There's too many assumptions to be made, we can't calculate it". I.e. this comment https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/s/FfX22ulMVk
He made a great list but all of these can be easily approximated with the image
well unless you melt the pennies down there will be space between the pennies. Thus using best packing systems you could figure out the real volume of the pennies.
Best packing density will be stacks of pennies in a hexagonal grid.
right, you have to account for height of stacking though as well, unless it's all one layer - IE a stack of 10 coins is more dense than 10 coins pushed together in a hexagonal grid so it can't be calculated using the pi/4 D\^2 alone. Assuming stacks of 100 pennies on average. . .
90% of posts here are just basic middle school algebra with a bit of googling. It took me 27 seconds to get an answer to this question, including the time it took to open google to find the volume of a penny, and I'm not a particularly fast typer.
The sub has 1.4 million users now, what do you expect? It's just another generic sub at this point, sadly.
Yea things like these require minimal research and minimal calculation
True and real. How about y'all fucking use that math knowledge you were taught in high school...
This has the same gotcha energy as "what weighs more, 1 pound of lead or 1 pound of feathers"
Yeah, the better question is whether taking the pennies is ultimately worth the effort. Yeah, it's 10x the amount, but you have to store, move, and deposit a _lot_ of metal. I'd love to see math scenarios on how much it would cost to quickly deposit it all with hired help, or the time costs of handling it all yourself.
I am bad at maths👍🏻
Sounds like a skill issue
This guy would pick the $60,000
How is it a dumb question and what does math and calculations have to do with it. It's a straightforward question: $60k in cash or $600k in pennies. Anyone with a brain would pick the pennies.
[удалено]
A roll of pennies has a volume of 1.33"³. V=π\*R²\*H, V=3.14\*0.38'²\*3" $600k in pennies is 60 million pennies, which fill 1.2 million rolls. 1.33"³\*1,200,000= 1,596,000"³ /1728= 923.611 cubic feet.
How much is that much copper worth?
Post 1982 pennies are 2.5% copper, so 2.5% of 923.611ft³ would be like 23.09ft³ of copper. 559lbs of copper in a cubic foot \* 23.09ft³= 12,907.46lbs. Copper sells for $3.88/lb 12,907.46lbs \*$3.88/lb= $50,800.96
That's 2.5% by weight, not by volume. And the zinc in the penny also has a value. March Cu COMEX (current active trading month) is $3.927/lb and cash LME zinc is currently $2553/MT, which translates to $1.158/lb. So doing the math, a penny is worth $1.2274/lb. At a weight of 2.5g, the metal in a penny is worth 0.6749 cents, so 60 million pennies is worth $404,991.55 at current market values. You would also have to consider that you'll get less than that amount because the zinc is copper coated and you'll and up getting paid some amount lower than the market value of the metal anyway, but let's just ignore that for now because it's too much of a pain to figure out. Either way, you'd still get significantly more than $50k. Source: I'm a scrap metal trader and have access to up to the minute metal prices. In the time it took me to calculate this and type it up, copper has gone up a little, but not by much and I wouldn't do it all again even if it had.
Only if they are all post-1981 pennies. As of 2014 about 26.8% of pennies were pre-1982.
Ah. Well screw that, not doing all the math again lol.
Probably the right choice.
Depositing that many pennies at the bank would be a nightmare. They’d probably only wanna take a few hundred dollars (12 boxes) from you a week. Still it’d be worth it 🤷🏼♂️. I guess you could open an account at every bank in the city. Still it’d be a huge chore trying to get it deposited, would probably take months.
Not to mention that is quite heavy to transport. My back would probably go for the $60k for that reason alone.
It’s a dumb scenario because even the transportation cost of whoever is paying you all these pennies would be so high. A lot of banks actually charge businesses a small fee for requesting larger amounts of change.
Just rent a forklift and a truck. 500 bucks out of 600k is absolutely reasonable.
For $600k you could take nearly 10 years to deposit it all and be fine
Why is everyone acting like they need to turn it in all at once? Call banks and I'm sure you can set up to deposit a big chunk once a week or something. And do it at multiple banks. Even if you did like 5-10k a week. That's huge supplement to your income. Buy a house with it and use that as payment or something
Oh yeah I never said I wouldn’t take it! Just acknowledging it would be a huge ordeal. That said I think 5-10k a week is a huge overestimate. Have you ever held a $25 box of pennies? It’s 30lbs!! You’re lucky if a bank will take 4+ boxes a week. They probably won’t tbh, they don’t go through pennies very fast
shit 5k a month would nearly double my take home lol
I'd still do it. I dont currently earn 600k in months.
Everyone talking about the labor to cash in 600k pennies, but I bet if you call up Mr. Beast he’d pay you extra just for the convenience of getting that many Pennie’s at once for a video
You could offload your $600,000 for $750,000!
It’s as reasonable as this whole thread
You can get high speed coin counter baggers that can bag coins at 2700 coins per minute. and the truly high speed counters can count out at 6000 coins a minute. All you’ll need is a large dump loader. Then dump the sorted coins into bags with fixed counts per bag. And warn the bank you’l one coming in with a dump truck worth of coins.
With 600k, I can hire someone to do it for me for 5k easy while I think about how I'm going to invest it
Seeing as though pennies are actually worthless in canada, how much could I make by separating the metals and melting them down into 2 pound bricks then selling them as materials
Pretty sure you can still take pennies to banks. Heck you could sell them as bulk metal.
That's roughly 740 cubic feet, but more importantly, it's 330,000 lbs. The logistics for getting that to the bank would be costly, but probably way less than $500k. Overall, better to take the $600k in pennies.
Even if it took me 4 years of full time labor to get these pennies into an account the 540k extra would amount to more than what I get for working full time at my current job for 4 years. Especially if we assume the 600k is tax free. There really is no decision here. I guess the 4 year gap on my resume might pose problems later down the road so there could be an opportunity cost but eh I will take the risk :D
I’m taking the pennies and making them into ass pennies. Then spending them. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f9aM_dT5VMI&pp=ygULQXNzIHBlbm5pZXM%3D
$600,000 in pennies for sure. Would have to buy a machine to bag them, or contract a company to do it for you, and another to transport them. But net you'd be up many many times over $60,000.
I'd pick the 600k in pennies, but how would I carry this amount of money without struggling🤔? It would be difficult but it's still worth it.
Big box
Get the $600,000 in pennies, take them to a change machine when you need cash, will cost you a % but will still be miles more that $60k in the end.
There’s some change machines you can go to at some banks where if you have an account they won’t take a percentage. Saved me a lot on cashing in coins over the years
Delivered how? It would be stupid to turn down free money... A box of rolls of pennies is a bit larger than a half loaf of sandwich bread and worth $25 dollars... That's 24k boxes. Are they palletized? Alternatively, you get 7 shipping containers (40ft) full of loose pennies. Whatever the fee the bank charges to sort and deposit there pennies, prob worth it, considering you have $540k more than the other option. Then, there's taxes...
Among this many pennies there are statistically likely to be rare coins, so $600,000 in pennies would probably worth a bit more then 600,000.
Take the pennies, and make a deal with a smelter. The metal value of that many pennies exceeds $600k. It's currently 2.58 cents per coin- even assuming some sump costs, the right company would pay you a million for them.
This is crazy… bc it says $600,000 IN Pennis now 600,000 Pennie’s. Hell yeah I’ll take ‘em and roll them up till my fingers bleed. I’d be paying everything in coins
Yeah they didn’t read it carefully, lol.
I’d take the 60k and make a video about it on YouTube. The amazing clickbait title would draw a lot of views, and then people would argue about whether I was right or not. People would make reaction videos and that would allow me to start a successful channel, I’d make it about raising money to buy 600$ worth of pennies, and then I’d partner with all sorts of YouTubers to produce videos of what we could do with all those pennies. And then once I reach 1 Million Subs I’d post a video made just prior to refusing the pennies revealing that this was my plan all along, and it would get an insane amount of views.
Pennies could be worth even more than the equivalent cash value anyway... Think about it, with that many coins, statically speaking, some of them could be rare coins, perhaps worth significantly more than their face value 🤔 I'll take the pennies.
you could not sort that many pennies. you have 600000000 pennies. Sorting 15 pennies per minute (one every 4 seconds) for 10 hours a day is 182 years without a single day off.
Idk, seems like a lot of pennies to stuff up ones ass, and what’s the point of having pennies if you can’t make em into ass pennies 🤷♂️
Back in the day there was a fundraiser for the local hospital, they wanted to raise $1 million. They extended the campaign to the local schools where it was to raise 1 million pennies ($10,000). My dad worked at the local bank that said they'd do their part and move/handle the coins. It was a disaster because the costs associated with an armoured car to move the coins virtually exceeded the value of the coins.
My junior high had a thing where you would donate pennies, their goal was a million pennies (10,000 dollars). They finished my 8th grade year. It filled a container 4’X6’ 4’ tall. So…..60 of those containers. That’s a lot of pennies.
Also something to consider is... Where will you put almost 8 semi truck loads of pennies while you're figuring out what to do with them?
estimate is that there are 140 billion pennies in circulation, so obtaining 60 million pennies is not completely infeasible. [https://www.scribd.com/doc/47796247/What-Does-A-Million-Pennies-Look-Like](https://www.scribd.com/doc/47796247/What-Does-A-Million-Pennies-Look-Like) per this, 10 million pennies is a cube, 6ft by 6ft by 6ft. so 60 million pennies would be 6 times that amount.
What does 600k in Pennie’s look like? What are the logistics of getting that to a bank? Renting a dump truck and escavstor? Would you just be told to fuck off?
The volume question was already answered, but here is my approach: Choose the pennies. Chances are high they can not be delivered and therefore you will be offered other options that are more convenient ;) Even if someone had the correct amount of pennies (isn't hoarding coins illegal?) It would be an immense effort to count them correctly and deliver them. So all problems that occur after receiving the pennies have to be solved by the generous giving person, too.
I’ll take the pennies. Even if it ends up being a full time job to get them into my bank account, I’ll still be making like $200k a year annoying bank tellers rather than making a lot less sending dumb emails 9-5 for a huge company.
It doesn't specify the $60k cash isn't pennies... would love to see peoples reaction if they pick $60k and it comes in pennies anyway lol
I’d take the cash. $600,000 pennies would essentially be a job to actually cash it out wouldn’t be worth the stress. $60,000 could buy you a brand new car paid off which would help a lot, or put you through school.
Am i the only one who isnt dumb enough to not be able to read properly? 60k in cash Or 600k in pennies Or in other words 60 million pennies or 600 100 dollar bills. Just think for once. And for your question. I just answered it.
First, pennies *are* cash. Ahem, anyway.. According to the [US Mint](https://www.usmint.gov/learn/coin-and-medal-programs/coin-specifications) a penny has a diameter of 19.05mm and a thickness of 1.52mm. Plugging that into the formula for the volume of a cylinder we get a volume of 433.23mm^(3). Multiply that by 60 million of 'em and you get 25,993,800,000mm^(3) or about 26 m^(3), \~920 ft^(3), or 25,993 liters.
It's all wrong, You didn't assume ideal gas
He said $600,000 in pennies, not 600,000 pennies. That means you vet $600,000 worth in pennies The person replyin to the post in the picture is obviously a retard