Not like any other. They are extremely regulated. Hence my question phrased to include that point specifically.
That was my point. The banking industry is extremely regulated, and it surprised me that this is not something they are required to do.
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like “hey, you got 2 tens for a five?” say it quick enough and you might get away with it
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?
Wouldn’t a million pennies be $10,000?
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They’ve been too lazy/frustrated/bored to count them all. They counted out a bag or two, and made a guess from there.
From what I gather from the article, they’ve been doing a lot of cleanup and are simply done with it.
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Ah, got it.
I suppose “a million” makes for a more grabby headline.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more. 
I saved a large cider jug’s worth of coins once and CoinStar-ed them, thinking I was going to afford some extra groceries and would up funding a trip to Daytona one spring.
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While coins are in fact legal tender, thanks to the Coinage Act of 1965, the Federal Reserve specifically explains on their website that a private business is free to develop their own policies on what forms of payment to accept unless state law mandates otherwise. The federal codes explain that dollars have to be accepted as legal tender, but never actually mandates which forms of dollars must be accepted.
As a drunk lawyer friend explained to me, a business can make policy the requirements payment using Euro bill. Thus, for your $10 bill, you hand them € 9.14. As long as it is posted, they can do that. I was drunk too, but this is the gist. This also means that “no bills over $20” is also allowed, as is “no pennies”.
As for it being a bank, the law still applies - they can refuse.
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Seems like it’s not that old; it says he started buying them up in the 80’s when they phased out copper pennies, so presumably it would have mostly been coins that were recent enough to still be circulating then. And yeah, good luck finding anything. A million pennies is simultaneously an unmanageable number of pennies for someone with the expertise to identify valuable ones to sift through, and a tiny fraction of the (apparently nearly 300 billion?) pennies in circulation, meaning odds are there’s probably nothing meaningfully rare in there anyway.
That said, apparently the scrap value of the copper itself works out to nearly 2.5 cents per penny, so I expect that’s the main rationale for the asking price.
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I once spent 6+ hours sorting an inherited bin of LEGO for my son (Mega Blocks should die in a fire). I would definitely give this more than an hour. There can’t be that many penny variants that are worth the trouble. Identify all variants worth over, say, $1000 and ploughing through them. Just excluding by year and mint letter would probably accomplish 90% of the work.
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What I learned from '80’s movies is that a single penny can be worth a lot.
And the same movie taught me that even a regular penny can be valuable.
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Or there was a barrier that was protected by a Faraday cage, and now the Gate is open.
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The Federal Reserve says somewhat the opposite. It says:
“Section 31 USC5103, entitled “Legal Tender,” states “United States coins and currency [including Federal Reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal Reserve Banks and national banks] are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues.”
While private businesses don’t have to accept them, any governmental entity or designaated national bank is required by law to accept them. So your soecific example of paying parking fines would not be true - the public entity would be legally required to accept them. Also, there are banks that would also be required to accept them.
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Definitely not true for national banks, which are required by law to accept all US legal tender, which includes coins. In LA specifically, there are three national banks: City National Bank, Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, and The Bank of New York Mellon Trust Company. There are about a dozen in the LA metropolitan area. Which banks are national banks is publicly available information on both the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department websites.
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All y’all need to cut out the penny bullshit already. We got rid of 'em a decade ago and it’s GREAT. (Canada)
I’d say we also should dump nickels and maybe dimes. 25 cents is probably the smallest useful coinage.
Also, it’s time to introduce $5 coins with orcas on them. Call 'em “finnies”.
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This is also why people float the idea of minting a “trillion dollar coin” to get around the stupid debt ceiling limit. That plan supposedly wouldn’t “work” if they made a trillion dollar bill because there is some difference in the balance sheet between minting a coin and printing a bill. This is entirely obsolete and goes back to when coins were precious metals and bills were backed by precious metals, but weird vestigial rules like that hang along long after they make sense.
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How about a trillion dollar platinum coin? Would that also not be legal tender?
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You don’t know this guy. Coins are his side gig, and he spends 100% of his time spent walking from one place to another looking for stuff on the ground.
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Finding differing information on the web on the legality of melting down pennies for their copper value. Some sites say it’s currently illegal while others say it’s not.
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