First can anyone tell me why it is so GD hard to find a 2009 nickle and is anyone else sick of being fooled by 1964 nickles? This nickle is almost black . . . and this one . . .
Nice war nickel and buffalo! 2009 nickel and dime mintages were reduced drastically compared to prior and successive years. I keep everyone I find, which for where I live is mostly from Denver.
That doesn’t make much sense if you think about it. Even with how plentiful 64’s are, why would they fool anyone while the rest of the earlier non-war dates do not?
Remember who you’re talking to here, CB. When it comes to things like that I’m like a real-life Mearth.
Basically, it seems that half of the planchets for 2009 were taken for 1964. The mintages for 1964 are significantly higher, and for 2009 they are significantly lower (still in the billions, but relatively lower) because of the crash. I think 1964 might have been to annoy collectors. The back story to that is that in 1964, as you may know, they announced that coins for 1965 would not be made of silver because the price of silver was rising, and it was becoming to expensive to make silver coins anymore. So collectors got angry, quite obviously, and complained a lot until the mint announced that mint marks would not exist anymore from 1965 to 1967, just to p*ss the community off even more. So I'm guessing they might have made the mintages for 1964 nickels higher so that there was no chance of them being rare, just to further annoy coin collectors. If I'm wrong, please correct me. Very nice finds though!
You are not wrong, but there's more to the story. In the early 1960s, roll and bag "collecting" started, due to the low purchasing power of 1 and 5 cent coins. This po'ed the government, because it created coin 'shortages.' The two types of 1960 1 cent coins set it in motion... 1964 nickels were minted with the date frozen at 1964 into 1965. The government was concerned that there would be shortages of dimes and quarters in 1965... and that meant that the smaller denominations would be substituted by businesses. Hence, 1964 dated non-silver coins, even in UNC, aren't worth any more than face value if you try to sell them to the average US coin dealer. 2009 coins stopped being minted before July 4? and the Mint announced it at the time. Dealers rushed out and hoarded the coins. 2009 dated nickels aren't worth more than face value if you try to sell them to the average US coin dealer. That said, 2009 dated nickels are harder to find in circulation than 73 years old 1946 dated nickels. Who knew?
