How Much Is 600,000 Pennies In Dollars?

When I was a child used to read the Duck Tales comics, which was the story of Donald Duck and his family. Donald’s Uncle, Scrooge, was a billionaire with massive money bin full of coins that he’d go swimming in. This got me thinking, how much would it take to fill up his money bin – probably a lot.  And, what kind of coins would do it – probably a lot.  I’m thinking 600,000 in pennies.  And how much is 600,000 pennies In dollars, anyways?

The answer is: 600,000 pennies is $6,000 dollars.

How Much Is 600,000 Pennies Worth?

Doing the math is pretty simple.

As part of the coinage act of 1792 congress set the value of a dollar at 100 pennies (here).  So, you simply divide 600,000 by 100 to get the number of dollars.  Or, 600,000 / 100.  This gives you $6,000.

So, how many dollars is 600,000 pennies? It’s $6,000.

Here Are Some Interesting Facts About Pennies:

1) Pennies were historically made out of 100% copper. However, modern pennies are mostly made out of Zinc.  Only 2.5% of a modern penny is copper.

2) Before 1850 pennies were made out of copper from Cornwall, England. After 1950 the mint used copper from Michigan.

3) Per Wikipedia, pennies used to be much larger.  For example in 1857 the penny was about the size of a Susan B Anthony dollar. Pre 1857 pennies looked about like this:

4) Modern pennies weigh about 2.5 grams. Thus, 600,000 pennies weigh about 1.5 million grams. This translates to 3,306 pounds and 14.9 ounces.

5) There are 84,480 pennies in each mile.  This is because 16 pennies laid side by side constitute 12 inches, or one foot.  And since there are 5,280 feet in one mile, that gives us, 16 * 5,260, or 84,480 pennies in a mile.

7) Unlike other coins, pennies have smooth edges.

8) Due to changing commodity prices, sometimes the value of the copper in pre 1982 US pennies is worth more than its face value.  However, melting down pennies is against  USTreasury regulations and could get you into trouble.  Here are the regulations if you want to read them yourself => here.

9) The official U.S. Mint’s name for the penny is the “cent”.  The official name from the U.S. Treasury is a “one cent piece”.  The colloquial term “penny” is not an official US government designation.

10) The most valuable pennies are wheat pennies from 1943 and 1944.  Some of these have a very high value for collectors.  For example, the 1943 D Lincoln Wheat Cent Bronze/Copper shown below, has a price tag of over $2,000,000.

By way of a conclusion, pennies are great for talking about compound interest. Saving Advice has a great article that asks if you’d rather have a million dollars or a penny doubled every day for 30 days.  Hint: you want choose the penny doubling every day for thirty days. At the end of the 30 days you’d have $5.36 Million.

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James Hendrickson

James Hendrickson is an internet entrepreneur, blogging junky, hunter and personal finance geek. When he’s not lurking in coffee shops in Portland, Oregon, you’ll find him in the Pacific Northwest’s great outdoors. James has a masters degree in Sociology from the University of Maryland at College Park and a Bachelors degree on Sociology from Earlham College. He loves individual stocks, bonds and precious metals.