For a little while there (about a year) I was taking every nickel in my change and setting it aside. The idea was to have a stash when the mint announces they are changing the composition due to high nickel and copper prices. At one point the five cent piece had a melt value of double the face value. Since then melt values plumetted to its current value, below face value. I now realize that was a very dumb idea. Especially when you can (and will after announcement) be able to walk into a bank and buy as many nickels as you want. Even after doing so you won't be able to do anything with them anyway since law prevents anyone from melting them legally. Take the copper penny for example. Even with a melt value well above face you can't find someone to pay you melt. And they are still found easily even after the composition changed over 30 years ago! Bottomline, I realized it was extremely foolish to hoard nickels.
Never have hoarded anything but I agree, it doesn't do much but tie up some cash. Remember when people wanted to save copper bars? Copper rounds? Someone else had a closet full of 5 gallon buckets with pennies. He was worried his floor would give out. All the YN's thought they would be doubling their money because they were on the ground floor of a new precious metal? Get rich plans can go wrong very easily.
A simple-minded way to save money is to dump your change every day into a can and then deposit it at the end of the year. I have seen that an average figure is $300 (which is chump change for some on this forum, but ain't bad).
Our credit union does not charge a percentage for machine-counting "$300 worth of change" if you deposit the money into your account. The machine-counter at xxxx charges 7.5%.
Metals increase in value slowly over time. When I was a kid, common change was 90% silver. Nowadays, the government makes cents out of pot metal and they cost more than a cent. Back then, you could get Morgan and Peace dollars at the bank, for a dollar. I have no problem with saving nickels, at 20 for a dollar. Ever priced common date V-nickels? Or Buffalo? Its the same with cents. A few years ago, I bought a $50 bag of wheats for $75, free shipping. Check that bag now. What's it cost you for a copper penny? Gosh, a whole cent! I have a bucket of nickels, and I save copper cents also, along with shiny zinc ones. The high grade common coins of yesteryear in my type set cost a wad. I will probably never realize a profit, but my kids, or grandkids will, and it only costs me pocket change.
I am still hoarding the copper cents, not because I think that the money value of them will someday be like silver coins, but because after I retire someday I will have lots of coins to go through looking for varieties and it will not cost me a cent.
When I got back into collecting, I found my old cent and nickel folders, which were not complete. With renewed interest in coins, I just started saving all nickels from change, for a couple of years. Still had to buy one. But, when I went through all I had set aside, it was so boring. One half are 1964, then all the rest are mixed, but no 2009's. Only one war nickel, which I noticed before I set it aside. And, of course, I lover Lewis and Clark and have studied them. Some time ago, Dave Harper wrote a Buzz about this subject, and his statistics matched mine: the experiment was repeatable and repeated.
I personally don't think the OPs idea was going to produce the intended results in the time he devoted to this venture, and unless the current coins began a period of official recall before any such composition change was announced, they'd probably only remain a spatial burden, as well as a financial debt in the way of easy liquidity (don't just show up to a bank branch with a few hundred dollars or more worth of nickels to cash in-- you will not be welcomed in that bank!), and decades upon decades away from serving as some sort of inflation hedge or alternative currency in a prepper/stacker/survivalist mind-set*. Even if there was a composition change, there would likely be as many collectors hassling banks for the new versions as there would be others skulking about for the old composition coins. There's nothing inherently wrong in having tried and learned something from this venture, and I'm sure that will always guide the OPs decision making in such matters fairly well from now on. There's nothing wrong with having done this and just stowing away what you managed to sort out of your change and hold on to for whatever reason. Unless that amount of money held in nickels is hindering your budget or burning a hole in your pocket for something else, you might as well just hang on to them in case you change your mind and decide you want them for something later, since you've already done the work of culling them and finding a place to hold them. If you look at the immense volume of how many of these single type coins there are, just the current Jefferson nickels alone, they are as common as dirt and they will be around for ages, literally littering the earth. All those people out there burying pipes full of nickel coins are just repeating human behaviors of centuries ago. Think of the hordes of coins churned up in the UK and Europe that we hear about in news reports quiet frequently, dating back to Ancient eras of coinage. People are still cleaning the dirt off Ancients! There are more coins out there than anyone could ever hope to lay hands on enough of to benefit from them under such conditions. And there are more than enough to go around and held among collectors to overturn the short term hopes of realizing a profit just because of a composition change. If only I had a nickel for every time someone had such an idea, I'd probably be a thousand-aire!
It came out between $24 and $26. I don't know the exact amount, all I know is it was enough for 12 rolls but not enough for 13. That may not sound like much but it's about 500 nickels.
I used to occassionally roll search nickels. I would just pick up $20 worth at a time. $20 = 400 (0.05¢) I do think people, not just collectors, are actively hording the 2005 Bison nickels simply because they think something about something related to something they think they know about old Buffalo nickels.
I am one whom saves change so it does mount up. When the state quarter program started I would save each one I received in change daily. I had a small can with a lid in the kitchen . It would hold about ten dollars. When that filled I had a jug in our walk in bedroom closet. That I would dump it into. One day the wife said I'm tired of moving this to clean. Do Something With It! Duh... off to the bank I go... Well it was close to a thousand bucks. Not quite but close. So the next coin show I was knee high in cotton. And picked up some very nice coins from pocket change.
i hold on to all the WWJ nickels, 2009 cents, and bicentennial quarters just because i like the designs. right now i have a gallon ziplock about halfway full (mostly cents)
my grandpa does this. he has a barrel over 1/3 of the way full with every coin he's gotten in change since the late 1970's (he does remove the silver ones first).
I don't hoard our US "nickels" because they aren't bullion at all. And I certainly don't hoard pre-1982 pennies because copper never really moves anywhere on the charts. I hoard European .999 pure nickel circulated coins. Particularly French Francs and Dutch Guilders. For the prices they sell at, they are very affordable. Sometimes I even pay less than they are worth in mixed lots. I might want to add that I began this hoarding when Nickel was already very low in price. When it dipped to $8-$6 per pound I've been doing most hoarding in that price range. I hope it goes to $50/pound one of these days. Yes, I wouldn't melt coins either. I don't understand why people do. It also ruins potential numismatic appeal. The coins I'm collecting/hoarding soon could have additional coin value as well as the nickel metal they contain. Win/win here.
Value is relative. Nickel and copper has costs to mine and refine, and there is always inflation. Consider the lowly wheat cent. I just skimmed a few EBay ads. Bags of 5000 wheat cents were priced between $209 and an eye-popping $675. We are not talking Proof 70, stunning rarities or gold slugs. Lots of dealers make a living selling wheatees for ten cents each and up. It is inevitable that one day, this profligate administration will further debase our coinage and the old copper memorial cents, nickels, at 75% copper, and cupro-nickel coins will become collectible Type coins. Even pot metal zinc cents in high grade. I like to metal detect, and I read that there are more coins in the ground than circulating. Coins containing valuable metals will be recalled, melted, hoarded eventually, as silver and gold was. The zinc cents tend to corrode if you even think about it. Heck, people throw them on the ground rather than carry them. So even with huge mintages, they will disappear. I had no money as a kid, but its rather small cost to put aside nickels and cents for my kids.
