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to cost more to mint a penny, than it was worth. Because of rising costs for copper, pennies minted from 1982 to today have been minted using a blend of 97.5 percent zinc and a 2.5 percent copper shell. The noble copper is no longer a geniune copper. It is now officially just a penny.

There are of course always a few exceptions to the rule and the penny is no exception to this. Usually if you can find one of these exceptions, than you have found yourself something fairly valuable, and it may be worth your while to check it out further! So if you spot a coin in your pocket or piggy bank that just doesn't look quite right, give it a second look, it might just be worth a little more than the value that is written on the face of your coin.

A couple unique pennies that you might want to look out for:

1. There were a few copper pennies created in 1943. These copper pennies can be quite a valuable find.

2. There are pennies that were minted from 1944 to 1946 using the metal from old ammunition shells. These pennies may have a darker color than normal pennies, or have streaks of color, within them. How is that for an early idea for recycling?

Sources:

http://coins.about.com/od/usco ins/f/copper_to_zinc.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C ent_(United_States_coin

http://www.finishing.com/284/0 4.shtml

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