# Melting down pennies **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 16, 2018, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/melting-down-pennies/826229 "2018-12-16T17:32:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![EscAlaMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/escalamike/32/4177_2.png) [@EscAlaMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EscAlaMike)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/melting-down-pennies/826229/41 "2018-12-19T17:53:01Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > We definitely put pennies, and occasionally nickels on railroad tracks - and found them later, nicely flattened. (Never considered doing this with dimes - much too valuable.) We debated whether this might cause the train to derail, and decided it was worth the risk. Yep. I’ve still got some pennies and a nickel that I flattened on a railroad track as a kid. My kids love to look at them. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/melting-down-pennies/826229/42 "2018-12-19T18:09:29Z")
> [@postpic200](#): > > [Federal Register :: Prohibition on the Exportation, Melting, or Treatment of 5-Cent and One-Cent Coins](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2007/04/16/E7-7088/prohibition-on-the-exportation-melting-or-treatment-of-5-cent-and-one-cent-coins) > > It is now illegal to melt pennies and nickels as of 2007. It is also illegal to export or take out of the country more than $5 worth of pennies or nickles. Yikes - when my wife worked in a retail establishment with a high cash turnover, the staff were allowed to fish the American coins out of the till and exchange them with Canadian. So we’d travel there and back with large bags (dollars and dollars) of US coinage when we visited the USA - handy for toll booths and overpriced hotel vending machines. Fortunately, most were not nickels. (I remember the Vegas panhandler’s face dropped when I gave him a large handful of dimes - since I guess it’s the only coin you can’t use in slot machines… ) I guess the problem with any such smelting operation is volume. If you need tens of thousands of dollars of specific (sorry) raw material to make a decent profit, it will be hard to remain unnoticed. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/melting-down-pennies/826229/43 "2018-12-19T18:37:06Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Survivor bias. The kids who did those things and died as a result aren’t posting about it on the internet. Nothing came of all that ‘ghost in the machine’ talk, then. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/melting-down-pennies/826229/44 "2018-12-19T18:52:03Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#): > > We used to put pennies on the railroad track. If we ever found them flattened I don’t remember it. My cousins, who lived near a railroad, tried this when I was visiting them. We were solemnly assured that doing so would cause the train to derail. It never occurred to us to question how a 0.08 ounce coin could so destabilize a 200 ton locomotive. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/melting-down-pennies/826229/45 "2018-12-19T21:00:16Z")
[![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/bETCusT5kNM/hqdefault.jpg "THE CAT CAME BACK") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bETCusT5kNM) ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/melting-down-pennies/826229/46 "2018-12-20T15:51:09Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Fortunately, most were not nickels. (I remember the Vegas panhandler’s face dropped when I gave him a large handful of dimes - since I guess it’s the only coin you can’t use in slot machines… ) There were dime slots back in the day; the club I worked for had a handful. I hated them because the damn dimes were so light weight it was a pain in the ass hitting that sweet spot in adjusting the acceptor between rejecting good coins and accepting bad ones. Ditto for penny slots but we had none of those. Nowadays with everything being cash register tapes and even some gaming machines where you can choose the denomination they skip over 10-cents, going from 5 to 25. A piece of trivia: Coin roll [holders and trays](https://www.wizardcoinsupply.com/roll-trays/) are color coded by denomination, red for pennies, blue for nickels, green for dimes, orange for quarters, and yellow for half-dollars. The light on top of the machine for calling for change or indicating a fault were white and another color. Once the other color was the same color as the denomination but that went by the boards decades ago. Now most of them are blue. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/melting-down-pennies/826229.md?page=2)