1904 Indian Head Cent
Rummaging around my piggy bank, I found this 1904 Indian Head U.S. Cent
At its current condition, for this particular year, it can be worth $2 - $3.50. At better conditions, the coin can be worth well above 5.00$ Some sell it for 30$ at top quality condition. For Uncirculated quality, it can be sold for over 90$.
So far, this is the rarest and most valuable coin I have. This is the coin that is going to make me start collecting. I've never done this before so seems like a good thing to get into.
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I have only one Indian Head Penny. I wish I had more.
I like to pull coins from circulation. All pennies minted before 1982 have a high percent of copper. According to Coinflation, copper pennies are worth $0.03. Unfortunately, they are increasingly hard to find.
https://www.coinflation.com/
You can separate copper and zinc pennies by weight. There are entrepreneurs who are running all the pennies at banks past scales to separate the copper pennies from the zinc ones. So they are becoming scarce.
Interestingly, the current coin to collect is the Nickel.
The melt value of a US nickel is $0.067; so, I started hoarding all of the nickels that I find.
I've got about 10 of them (not including the Indian Head Cent).
Three of them are dated 1982, and from my knowledge they are the Copper ones. In 1982 they were producing both the Copper-majority and the Zinc-majority coins at the same time. In 1983, they ended the Copper-majority pennies.
Today, the Zinc Pennies are worth roughly $0.00779. I checked out the current price of Zinc and Copper per pound and this is the value I got according to the composition of a penny I currently have weighed at ~2.5 grams.
The price of Nickel is looking real nice too. If the price of Copper increases dramatically, then the price of a Nickel will increase drastically.
I'm also collecting my US Nickels too.
Since copper is in everything, the price of copper decent indicator of economic health.
The military is a primary buyer of Nickel. Military tensions can increase its price. During WWII, they made nickels out of silver.