Anyone hoarding pre-1982 pennies

I've recently learned that American pennies made before 1982 (and some made in 1982, but not all) were made almost entirely out of copper. Today's pennies are made almost completely out of zinc.

What many people have apparently been doing for years is going through pennies looking for those made before 1982 and hoarding them. The copper in them seems to be worth around two pennies, double the face value. Most commonly, this is done by getting a $25 box of pennies from a local bank, sorting through them, and returning the non-copper pennies to a different bank (in order to minimize the risk of getting the same pennies later on).

From my research, it seems that only about 13% of the pennies in circulation are pre-1982. So with 2,500 pennies in a box, about 325 are pre-1982. If we assume that they're worth double their face value, that means you could make an average profit of around $3.25 per sorted box.

It's currently illegal to melt down pennies for their copper, but many believe that the day is coming when, due to the wonderfully spectacular lie that inflation is a good thing, they are ceased to be produced, at which point in time they could legally be melted. Others believe that these might be useful for barter purposes down the road. And still others believe that these will eventually gain some numismatic value; there are a few rare pennies that already possess this.

My biggest problem with this is that, most likely, you're only 'profiting' a little over $3 in return for sorting 2,500 pennies. That sounds like a bad use of time to me. Granted, you can get a machine that will sort them for you, but those are expensive.

Thoughts? Am I missing something here?

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Anyone hoarding pre-1982 pennies