10. My Copper/Zinc Penny Sorter (Carpentry Skills)

Here is a video I uploaded on January 6, 2009 on YouTube of my penny sorter.  I am the original Sportsdude1325. I can't believe this was 7 years ago.  It sorts copper and zinc pennies from one another.  All pennies made pre-1982 contain 95% copper and pennies made post-1982 contain 97.5% zinc.  I wanted an easy way to sort these pennies from each other without hand sorting them.  So I bought an old coin comparator that was salvaged from a slot machine.  You place a sample coin inside the comparator and then the machine will "accept" or "reject" any coin that goes through based off weight.  The difference between a copper and zinc penny is .61 grams. Pennies on the left are 'accepted' copper and the pennies on the right are 'rejected' zinc. 

The quality of the video absolutely sucks where I was actually never even able to prove the contraption works but it does.  You may ask why someone would want to sort the pennies but copper pennies are worth more melt value than face value.  It is now illegal to melt the pennies but people will still buy the 'only' copper pennies on eBay.  Coin collecting and coin hoarding was a fun hobby I did in middle school.

I got the idea from an industrial size one that called a "Ryedale Apprentice Penny Sorter" which at the time cost $850+.  I clearly didn't have the money but I wanted to try and make one.  I found no one who had made one themselves so I had no manual or guide.  The two hardest parts of building this was first finding the comparitor, that took 2 months of checking eBay every day till one popped up.  Secondly, there was no power source included so I had to find the wire harness myself and that took weeks because I couldn't just go buy it. I found a place about 20 miles from my house which was a computer salvage place and I asked if I could go through their stuff till I found the harness.  I was there for hours and finally came across the piece.  Then I had to buy a volt converter that plugged into the wall and attach a cigarette receptacle to each end.  The power source cost more than the coin comparitor.  Finally, I was able create my own penny sorter with $50 than spend $850 for the industrial one.