Nickels and their modern values

Discussion in 'US Coins Forum' started by Vlad, Jul 8, 2006.

  1. Vlad

    Vlad Senior Member

    Right now nickel cost almost 6 cents by its metal content.. One could think he can make money this way, and I hope , one can... But! It will cost way more than a penny per nickel for the smelter to separate those 75% copper from 25% nickel, and as far as I know, stainless steel produces will not tolerate any copper .. What do you think? Is it time to hoard nickels? When will you be able to sell them? How long do you think Mint will produce them without changing the metal content?
     
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  3. Morgan Dollar13

    Morgan Dollar13 New Member

    I think the mint will not change the nickels until 2013-75 years after the beginning of them in 1938
     
  4. cladking

    cladking Coin Collector

    There are numerous stainless steels that require copper. There is even one that uses 75% copper and 25% nickel. The primary costs for recycling are transportation and handling.

    I've seen vast numbers of coins used as alloy in the production of various metals. I've seen pallet after pallet of Lebanese 1L coins (nickel) dumped into furnaces. Most such melting is done in Europe and Asia but when you buy scrap you don't know what they're going to send you many times.
     
  5. Cloudsweeper99

    Cloudsweeper99 Treasure Hunter

    Hoarding nickels and cents for the metallic content seems like a tough way to make a buck. At some point, the mint will change the composition of the coins if the cost becomes prohibitive, and the older coins will be melted. Smelters operate on a scale where they can make a small profit on fairly tiny differences in value. It's their business.
     
  6. samjimmy

    samjimmy New Member

  7. Vlad

    Vlad Senior Member

    It already did, actually. Or mor e correctly, US dollar " went down through the basement"
     
  8. samjimmy

    samjimmy New Member

    And exactly how much copper (or wheaties if you want to use that) would one have to own to actually make any money? A pound of wheaties isn't worth saving IMHO, as even if it doubled, you paid over melt for them and it would cost more to melt them than the copper value (for an end user with one pound of wheaties).
     
  9. tracy5900

    tracy5900 Coin Hoarder

    problem for nickel

    reduce the weight from 5 grams to 4 grams. change the content from cu-nickel to cu-nickel clad steel. in short made nickel exactly what the canadian did. for penny, imitate the canadian cent too. after all, one u.s. dollar is now equal to almost one canadian dollar.

    melt all wheat cent, and pennies from 1959 to 1982. and all nickels too. just like the canadian did. they make a lot of money from doing that. if not. discontinue the cent and the nickel. issue a $5.00 coin (size smaller than current dollar coin). reduce the size of dollar to near quarter size. discontinue the one dollar paper note. i think this will work for american.
     
  10. OldDan

    OldDan 共和党

    Bite your tongue tracy, has it ever occured to you that unlike Canadians, Americans collect these coins. These are the denomination that mose YN's start out collecting, and the beginning of some good collections over the years. NO we don't want to melt any coins, thank you very much just the same.
     
  11. CoinDude08

    CoinDude08 New Member

    OldDan has spoken! I agree I think that drastically changing amercian currency is a bad idea, honestly the coins could be made of a metal alloy that is cheaper but eliminating coins seems a tad drastic to me. We have a pretty decent system in America and I see no problem with the coins currently minted.
     
  12. tsk

    tsk Member

    It seems to me that drastically changing American currency isn't going to happen. There are a lot of difficulties it would cause (vending machines, etc). But it seems to me like it would be a good idea and at some point is going to have to happen.

    In principle I wouldn't mind seeing them eliminate the nickel and penny, round things to the nearest 1/10 and then introduce new currency (like a $2.50 coin and a $10 coin and maybe even a $20 coin). Maybe even put some silver content in some of the bigger coins so it had some actual intrinsic value :). While you were at it, you could probably get rid of the half dollar since no one uses them and they're so bulky.
     
  13. Vlad

    Vlad Senior Member

    Yea, and $5000 and $10 000 , and $100 000 banknotes will follow. Been there. Don't want to go there again.
     
  14. Vlad

    Vlad Senior Member

    Who exactly made the money? Canadians? Canadian banks? Government?
     
  15. CoinDude08

    CoinDude08 New Member

    BLASPHEMY! Haha but I like searching through roll after roll of half dollars! :goofer:
     
  16. jumpingrat

    jumpingrat Senior Member

    Not as long as Sen. Edward Kennedy is in the Senate. I have heard that he is adament about keeping it as a memorial to the late Pres. Kennedy.
     
  17. Just Carl

    Just Carl Numismatist

    Hoarding Nickels or Cents as a possible someday profit is a little nutty. If you ended up with a few tons of them, where would you keep them? What would you put them in? Then ask yourself, SELF, what do I do with all this? Bag it and take it to a metal recycler and if he give you a few dollars profit, think of the simple interest in a bank savings account instead. Sort of like hoarding the buggy whips a hundred years ago because those dumb auto things will never take hold.
     
  18. cladking

    cladking Coin Collector

    I don't disagree, but I've got about a hundred pounds of Canadian nickels that I couldn't get rid of ten years back at any price. They were worth only 3c each as money and it cost nearly as much to ship them. Now with nickel over $10 / lb, these pure nickel coins are worth a thousand dollars.

    It'll cost $40 to ship them though.
     
  19. AgCollector

    AgCollector Senior Member

    Out of curiosity what multiple of face is that, i.e. dollar value of the nickel metal in 20 nickels?
     
  20. Just Carl

    Just Carl Numismatist

    Also, just curious, what is face value, where did you ever get that many, why did you ever get that many, what are you going to do with them, what condition are they in and does anyone really collect them???????
     
  21. Conder101

    Conder101 Numismatist

    You know, that was the same argument used back in the early 1960's for why it didn't make any sense to hoard silver coins.

    100 pounds of Canadian nickels would have a face value of about 454 dollars Canadian. So you would make about $500 profit on them even with shipping.
     
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