U.S. pennies have never been made out of silver.   It contains about 2.95 grams of copper, and there are 453.59 grams in a pound. What is the Penny Made of Today. Originally, "penny" referred to a two-cent coin. Furthermore, the current penny is often referred to as a “Zincoln”. The reason is that copper atoms combine with oxygen molecules to form copper oxide, in a chemical process called oxidation. The problem was resolved by reducing the size of the cent and changing its composition from copper to an alloy of copper and nickel. However, there are also some good reasons why it shouldn't, and those are mainly emotional — based on the penny's long history. Unfortunately, the increasing price of copper in the early 1980s forced The United States Mint to change the composition of the penny permanently. Today the cost of copper is too high to make a solid copper coin/penny. The dime, quarter, and half dollar coins are 91.67% copper. The penny and the nickel, however, are different.   The price of copper on Dec. 10, 2019, was $2.75 a pound. That year the copper was removed from the penny and zinc-coated steel cents were made for the first and only time in history. It's worth one cent. The U.S. Copper Penny Melt Value Calculator, located below, will help you in finding the total copper value and total copper content of your pre-1982 United States Lincoln 95% copper cents. This means that a penny will corrode when simply exposed to oxygen in the air we breathe every day. The Abraham Lincoln penny was minted in 1908 to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of Lincoln's birth. How to spot a rare 1943 Copper Penny: You have a sock full of pennies that your grandparents saved – some are dated 1943 and copper colored. Today the cost of copper is too high to make a solid copper coin/penny. In order to save copper for the war effort, the United States Mint under the authority from Congress began making pennies from steel with a thin coating of zinc. Why Are 1943 Copper and 1944 Steel Lincoln Cent Errors So Valuable? There have been several other minor changes in the coin metal composition. The patina actually protects the copper below the surface from further corrosion, making it a good water-proofing material for roofs (which is why the roofs of so many old buildings are bright green). The penny is zinc, not copper. When the two-cent coin was discontinued, penny took over as the new one-cent coin's name. How Much Copper is in a Penny . But copper became too valuable and US money became too devalued to continue that way because there would be a lot more than 1¢ worth of copper in a penny, so people would be tempted to buy pennies, only to melt them down and sell the copper. All the other coins are neither copper nor silver. As to why back in the day pennys were made out of copper? Copper is an essential metal in the manufacturing of ammunition. The most common pennies you will find are what are commonly called zinc pennies. The new penny is made of a metal composition of 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper.   That meant the copper in each penny was worth about 1.7 cents. Penny Year Compositions . Back in the early 1970s, the rising price of copper was pushing the cost to make a penny over its face value of one cent.