Where do coins go?!

Over the course of my youth I have returned many many coins back to the earth.
I probably have 2000 coins in my collection. Plus jars, rolls etc. that have not been searched through for ... whatever, errors, rarities?, anything I might want to collect.

I'm sure that there are many people/families out there that are now cashing in their jugs of coins with no regard to them being collectible. Banks and coinstars are reintroducing a lot of the hoarded coins back into circulation. Businesses will return these coins to the bank for roll searchers to pick out the more valuable coins. Maybe it'll be a good time to go back and roll search again!!

Bruce

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I think they are all under the seat of my car!

 

An interesting topic with some interesting replies and I may have missed a few.

Do people hoard? Yes! I have financed many a vacation with nothing but hoarded coins. Of rourse when I turn them in they are no longer hoarded.

Think of coins "released for circulation" that never properly made it there. Ike Dollar on up is a good place to start. I see Ikes, Susan Bs, Sacs and now Presidentials constantly at the shop and advise people to spend them.
This also holds true of Kennedy halves as so few actually use them. YEt we still keep making them. Now you have to order Kennedy halves from the mint yet they still keep producing them.

Hey what about BiCentennial quarters. Man I get tired of seeing those. Hoards lying around and he vast majority worth 25 cents each.

So that explains a lot by change hoarders and "non collectors" as it were.

Here's where I get jaded. The U.S. Mint.
Working in a coin shop I see it. There are billions of coins being minted every year. Now we have Coinstar etc. where people cash them in for groceries etc. The District banks have no reason to order from the Feds as they have plenty yet they are still produced. THEN the Mint sells them at inflated prices for the collectors.
We had to get both the Puerto Rico and Guam quarters at a nice premium from the mint. Hence we charge more. Our customers want them you see.
Today I went to the bank and guess what. I got two rolls of Puerto Rico for face value as we all should.

What does it tell you when you can order Native American dollars for face from the U.S. Mint in lots of $250 and get them shipped free. It tells me they are not moving and they can do this while still making a profit (production costs).

So where's the money? TONS of it sitting in vauts.

 

I forgot to mention this:

Millions upon million upon millions of silver and gold US coins were shipped overseas or to Mexico and South America and melted when their melt value exceeded their face value.

 

With that and all other things being considered, you start to realize that many, many, original mintage figures in the redbook are absolutely worthless information as far as what's actually left in existance.

For example, some gold coins that may have had a mintage of 100,000 may be lucky to have 5,000 known examples still in existance but I don't think people realize it. Many original mintages were less than 100,000.

Not to mention how many Morgan dollars are now Peace dollars.

 

5 Brink's Trucks? - Heck you can easily haul 250 coins in a Tonka Truck.

 

...and some nutty story like this pops up every year or so,

Man Buys Chevy with Small Change:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7559881.stm

 

Why does the mint crank out billions more coins every year? Because if you work the numbers you will find that with a population of 300 million if each person loses, destroys, or hoards on average ONE coin per week, it will consume the Mints ENTIRE annual output.

And as for the number of coins the mint has produced since it's beginning, you will find that the very large mintages are a recent thing not extending much further back than your 30 year measurement. For example the coinage of the 1964 half dollar was greater than the entire output of half dollars from 1794 to 1963. The 1979 mintage of SBA dollars was close to the combined mintage (less the Pitman act melting) of all of the silver dollars that came before it. And the mintage of the 2000 Sac was greater than that by almost 100%. The first year of the President dollars saw almost as many as the 79 SBA's, So 80% of all the "silver" dollars ever made have been made in the last 30 years, 60% in the last nine years. And as I said, hoard one coin per week and the entire annual mintage disappears. That's why my question has always been not where do they go, but how come we don't have chronic shortages?

 

Well, there's still a lot of change circulating from the 60's. Some of it has held up ok and hasn't been lost. You have to figure out of that 300 million, how many kids probably don't have much if any change. Either too young or don't care.
Most likely almost everyone living in nursing homes have no need for a change jar or have given them up. A lot of them eat there and pay for their stay and not much else. So not much change coming in.
The homeless probably don't leave change sitting around. Most mentally challenged people probably would not be hoarding change. My wife spends change or uses a debit card for everything.
I'm sure there are also many others who spend it as they get it too. Not every single person hoards obviously, but enough do to where the mint needs to make more.

You could probably widdle the 300 million down to around 150 million people who would actually be major factors in affecting the change supply, is my guess. And then only a percentage of them would be 'change storers' while another percentage spends it and another percentage primarily uses plastic for day to day spending now.

 

I realize that not all of the 300 million people are going to be coin sinks, but those that are sock away a LOT more than one coin per week. I would imagine that most coin hoarders sock away at least an average of four coins per day, probably more. But that means each of those hoarders is putting away the coin allotment for 28 other people. For every increase by one coin in that per day average increases that person equivilent by 7 people. And at 4 coins per day for those hoarders it only takes 10.7 million of those 300 million to wipe out all the coins each year. That's a little over 3.5% of the population.

 

Have you ever seen what the elements do to a zinc cent? I dropped a couple onto the ground to see what would happen after time passed. After just about 3 months, they start to discentrigate.
So maybe some have just vanished.

 

Yeah, good point.

 

Great discussion. I learned a lot. I never thought of myself as a hoarder, but I'm guilty.

 

I can personally account for 20,000 US coins out of circulation plus my girlfriend has a bunch of pennies at the bottom of her purse.

 

Where the heck do all the billions upon billions of coins vanish to?
...................................................................................................
i can tell you where some of them end up, on the beaches around sydney, australia, i find quite a few with my metal detector and it's always a thrill finding something different. mike.

 

what i'd like to know is where all the metal for the coins is mined from. Is there just some giant craters left by the mint?

Maybe this is an early US mint site, not a meteor crater....

 

Well, there was a significant amount of NICKEL-iron found at Meteor Crater! =P

 

Actually, I believe the open pit mine near Magna, Utah is bigger than Meteor Crater. Thats where most of the copper used in this country comes from.
Guy~

 

Many are in American graveyards, The old custom of placing 2 coins over the dead persons eyes to pay the tiller man to cross the river Styx's. Ripley

 

For some reason never thought of that. Used to just throw them accross the Lakes and Rivers around here.
There is a little gun thing that shoots little circular plastic things and I've seen kids launch coins from them into the lakes though.
We have metal recyclers all over the place around me lately and I know a few electricians that through in Copper coins with the sort of borrowed wires they take there.
Jewelers have melted coins by the ton for a long time now also. To them jewlery sells for more than a few silly coins.
And don't forget it's considered good luck to place a coin under new concrete sidewalks, stairs, porches, roads.