The bank will take the rolled pennies back as long as you don’t try to unload a pallet load at a time. But there is effort involved in re-rolling them, of course. The bank will also give you a dozen or 20 flat, empty wrappers for the asking.
If you look thru goodly numbers of pennies, you’ll become able to identify the pre-1982’s on sight. Not all of them, but most of them. On average, they are *generally* darker, of course, but not necessaraily so. They tend to be slightly thicker. I’ve found loads and loads of very shiny 1970’s pennies and, even more 1980 and 1981’s. Once (within the last 2 years) I went into a local B of A branch and got a box of $25 worth of pennies (when I was doing this) About 35 rolls of pennies within that box all had “Bank of America” with a purchase order number and a date something “7-22-82” on them, printed on the paper wrapper. All, every penny in those rolls was pre-1982. Those rolls must have sat untouched for nearly 30 years.
These older pennies are also struck better, more crisply.
The problem with this entire exercise is *verification* when you go to sell them. A buyer cannot easily verify that your submission is all composed of these earlier pennies without examining them at great effort.
A better exercise, IMO, is getting $1000 worth of half dollars from your bank. Last time I did this, I got exactly 1 90% HD, which was disappointing. The time before, and it was in 2010, I got 4 qty 90% HD’s and 9 qty clad ones. And a SBA dollar and one of those new manganese-type dollar coins.
Sight can be tricky--I have seen a number of pre-82 pennies with good mint luster intact (piggy bank dumpings), and a lot of the newer cents which are downright ugly.
I have found, however, that when a copper cent bounces off the hardwood table it rings, and the zinc ones sound flat. Compare, and I think you'll find it works very well.