Is it possible to use Copper pennies as alloy for silver making?

A. Copper wire would be a better choice. Wire from the hardware store will be over 99% pure copper. Stranded wire could easily be cut into small pieces that will more easily go into solution in the molten silver.

Copper pennies are hard to come by - recently minted pennies are zinc with a thin copper plating.

A. Hi Shelley. Larry has a good idea. The electrical conductivity of copper drops dramatically if it's even slightly impure, so any wire you find will be very pure copper.

Pennies up to 1982 are copper, but not highly purified copper; after 1983 they are a thin copper plating over a zinc core.

While it's probably okay to use pennies in science experiments without Big Brother actually caring, when you start melting down coins whose metal values are greater than their face values, we're drifting towards a boundary line. If China bought up our pennies or nickels en masse at face value to melt them down it would be an actual problem :-)

Sterling silver is 92.5% silver and 7.5% other stuff; I think that "other stuff" is usually mostly copper. Good luck.

Regards,