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U.S. Nickel worth more than a nickel again
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<p>[QUOTE="-jeffB, post: 8040474, member: 27832"]Gold recovery is different because it's a <i>whole lot</i> less chemically active than most of the metals it's alloyed with. There are only a few classes of things that will chemically attack gold, and it's really easy to turn the resulting products back into gold metal.</p><p><br /></p><p>For almost <i>any</i> standard alloy, though, you can come up with an economical process to separate it -- as long as there's enough of a market. Setting up the plants to do it is a big expense, and you'd need a guaranteed market to make <i>that</i> worthwhile.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now you've got me thinking more about this. US five-cent pieces are richer in nickel than any ore (25% vs low single digits). But industrial nickel production amounts to <i>millions of TONS per YEAR</i>. Assume we could haul in ten billion nickels -- probably a small fraction of what's out there, but a huge task to gather. That's fifty billion grams, fifty million kilograms, fifty thousand metric tons, yielding just over ten thousand metric tons of pure nickel. That's less than 1% of annual production.</p><p><br /></p><p>So, allowing nickels to be melted down wouldn't make a significant dent in the nickel-metal market. But if inflation makes the metal in a five-cent piece worth <i>fifty</i> cents, the nickel-metal market will make a significant dent in the supply of nickels.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="-jeffB, post: 8040474, member: 27832"]Gold recovery is different because it's a [I]whole lot[/I] less chemically active than most of the metals it's alloyed with. There are only a few classes of things that will chemically attack gold, and it's really easy to turn the resulting products back into gold metal. For almost [I]any[/I] standard alloy, though, you can come up with an economical process to separate it -- as long as there's enough of a market. Setting up the plants to do it is a big expense, and you'd need a guaranteed market to make [I]that[/I] worthwhile. Now you've got me thinking more about this. US five-cent pieces are richer in nickel than any ore (25% vs low single digits). But industrial nickel production amounts to [I]millions of TONS per YEAR[/I]. Assume we could haul in ten billion nickels -- probably a small fraction of what's out there, but a huge task to gather. That's fifty billion grams, fifty million kilograms, fifty thousand metric tons, yielding just over ten thousand metric tons of pure nickel. That's less than 1% of annual production. So, allowing nickels to be melted down wouldn't make a significant dent in the nickel-metal market. But if inflation makes the metal in a five-cent piece worth [I]fifty[/I] cents, the nickel-metal market will make a significant dent in the supply of nickels.[/QUOTE]
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U.S. Nickel worth more than a nickel again
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