Create your own bottom fishing weight using literal pennies. Just drill a small hole into a few pennies and thread them onto our wire penny pole. Eleven pennies equal 1 ounce and cost, well 11 cents. Lead weights cost up to 7 times more. Our penny pole holds up to 55 pennies or 5 ounces worth of pennies. Get the perfect weight for your situation by adding or removing pennies to make micro adjustments. It also serves as a rattle as you move it across the bottom. If it snags on the bottom and you lose it, you've lost just 11 cents and your not leaving toxic lead behind to pollute our waters. It just makes sense. Is it legal to drill holes in a penny? The short answer is yes, as long as it's not done fraudulently. In other words, it can no longer be used as a penny, but do your research. You can do a Google search on "Are park penny presses legal" or See Section 331 of Title 18 of the United States code.

Is it illegal to damage or deface coins?

Section 331 of Title 18 of the United States code provides criminal penalties for anyone who “fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the Mints of the United States.” This statute means that you may be violating the law if you change the appearance of the coin and fraudulently represent it to be other than the altered coin that it is. As a matter of policy, the U.S. Mint does not promote coloring, plating or altering U.S. coinage: however, there are no sanctions against such activity absent fraudulent intent.