It just happened that with the slow economy a lot of people were recycling their change so the banks had no need to order nickels or dimes. in turn the mint kept production down.
In April of 2009, the mint announced they would not be producing anymore 2009 dimes or nickels due to the low demand (bad economy and all of the people returning coins to coinstar and similar machines). This was reported in CoinWorld. This meant that there was going to be the lowest mintage in 40 years for these two issues. As it stands, there were about 96 million p dimes and 40 million D dimes as well as p and d nickels (approximate). So, in May of last year, I found 2009 P dimes and mentioned it here on Cointalk. Several people encouraged me to put it on ebay. I did. What followed was incredible. People paid crazy prices on my auctions (because I was the first) and I made a lot of money selling current year P mint dimes. Then another CT member found P dimes and nickels in Puerto Rico and made many times more than me on ebay. As it stands, the 2009 D dimes and nickels (business strike) have not be released from the Fed. Also, as far as I know, no 2010 dimes or nickels have been produced yet. So, that is why 2009 dimes and nickels are special. If you find the D minted ones first, get it on Ebay as fast as you can!
I was thinking the same thing lately....haven't heard from Manny in a long time. I also wondered if he got into the Shield Cent action from Puerto Rico earlier this year when they were selling those before the release date in the US.
Not much unless you have a BU roll, then they still carry a premium. Just do a search on ebay to find out how much. bob
