By Rob Amen TRIBUNE-REVIEWYour two cents might be worth more than you think. That's the case if you're holding pennies minted before 1982.For just the second time since 1793, when the U.S. government authorized the minting of one-cent coins, a penny is worth more than one cent because the price of copper has skyrocketed to historic highs. It barely eclipsed that threshold -- and only briefly -- in the late 1980s.But it has surged well beyond that recently, thanks in part to strong demand from China, where manufacturers have been stockpiling the metal before the Lunar New Year holiday, which begins today.Today's pennies are copper-plated and mostly zinc. But from 1864 to mid-1982, the coin was 95 percent copper and weighed 3.1 grams. With copper selling for $2.23 a pound, a pre-1982 penny actually is worth about 1.45 cents -- 45 percent above face value -- based on its copper content.Someone with a pile of pennies gathering dust in a jar could melt them down and sell the copper for a tidy profit. It's perfectly legal. "If you have money, and it belongs to you, you can do pretty much whatever you want with it," said Mike White, a spokesman for the U.S. Mint.But good luck finding a willing smelter."If someone had 500 one-cent pieces, and they're worth $7, they probably can't do anything with them. If they knocked on a refinery door, they would probably tell them to go away," said Dave Bowers of Wolfeboro, N.H., a 1960 graduate of Penn State University who has written 40 books on coins.Asarco, a Tucson, Ariz., refining company specializing in copper, does not melt downpennies, a spokeswoman said.Several scrap-metal dealers in Pittsburgh said they don't melt coins, either.Doing so is only worthwhile when copper sells on the commodities exchanges for at least $1.55 a pound, the threshold at which a pre-1982 penny surpasses its face value. Copper has remained above that price since July and peaked Dec. 27 at $2.28 a pound.The only other time since 1900 that a penny crossed the $1.55 barrier was in December 1988 and the following month, according to information provided by the New York Mercantile Exchange and Daniel Edelstein, a copper commodity specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey.Copper's market price fluctuated then and eventually dropped below $1.55 at the end of January 1989, according to NYMEX.Twice before -- in 1857 and 1982 -- the rising price of copper prompted the U.S. government to modify the penny's composition.From 1795 to 1857, pennies were pure copper and weighed nearly 11 grams, Bowers said. The government made wholesale changes in 1857, when it approved a smaller version weighing about 4.5 grams, he said.The 11-gram pennies, even at copper's 1900 price of about 16 cents a pound, still would not have been worth more than one cent in their day. Copper prices before 1900 were unavailable.White said he was unsure how many pre-1982 pennies are in circulation today.The Mint does not recall coins, he said, although some are withdrawn because they become damaged or worn.The average life span for a coin is 30 years, White said."A penny has a different life span," he said. "They get sort of parked in cookie jars and piggy banks."Coinstar, a Bellevue, Wash.-based company whose machines count coins in exchange for paper money, estimated that $10.5 billion in coins sit idly in American homes at any given time.That's about $99 per home, said George White, a Coinstar spokesman.That makes for a whole lot of cents.And, in a way, sense.After all, a penny saved is more than a penny earned.Copper's currencyCopper is one of the oldest metals ever used and was an important material in thedevelopment of human civilization.It has become a major industrial metal, ranking third after iron and aluminum in terms of quantities consumed.It is a better conductor of heat and electricity than any other metal except silver.Electrical applications such as power transmission and generation, building wiring and telecommunications, account for about three-quarters of total copper use.Copper turns green when it reacts with atmospheric pollutants and corrodes.The Statute of Liberty contains 31 tons of copper.Chile is the world's leading copper producer.