Will Nickels Stop Circulating Soon?

I wasn't planning on starting my own little hoard, lol. Just pull 1 or 2 for posterity. I didn't know there were true nickel nickels, somewhere.

 

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You can melt any coins except cents and coppernickel 5 cent pieces. The law making them illegal to melt was created about 7 or so years ago. (copper and nickel were much higher back then, copper around $4.50 per pound and nickel was pushing $20 per pound)

Now while you can't melt them you are perfectly free to drill holes in them, beat them up with hammers, fold them up with a vice, dissolve them in acid etc. But you just can't melt them.

 

Pure nickel is slightly ferromagnetic. If you aren't sure, just get a strong magnet. They will be attracted to it slightly.

 

It isn't that slight, is it? Nickel's a bit less ferromagnetic than iron, but it still jumps to a strong magnet.

 

To be honest, I've never tried it. I just know it is ferromagnetic from my work in the electronics industry.

 

Thank you for the tip. We use rare earth magnets at work for separating foreign coins quickly so, that's perfect.

 

The value is on the coin, FIVE CENTS. It doesn't matter what it costs to make them, they are only worth five cents. It's also against the law to melt them so saving them would be futile.

 

Honestly I think nickel is better to hoard than copper. I'm waiting for another spike like it did in 2007 when it went to $30/lb.

Copper looks nice but that metal just doesn't move unless you've got millions in paper stock in copper.

 

US nickels are actually mostly copper (75%). Canadian nickels, on the other hand, are pure nickel. I'm not worried. Sure, it costs more than a nickel to mint a nickel but the cost to print a $100 bill is only 14¢.

 

Canadian nickels WERE pure nickel. They haven't been since 1982

 

Depends on the year. They have been made of nickel, tombac (a bronze alloy), chrome plated steel, copper nickel, and I believe nickel plated steel.

 

While I don’t expect it will be significantly profitable to hoard nickels due to their metal content, I am nevertheless holding on to all the nickels I come across, as I believe it is inevitable that US circulating coinage will be reduced to plated zinc and steel junk sometime in the not so distant future. I think once that occurs, cupronickel coinage will start to rapidly disappear from circulation. Besides, I’m not stacking anything else with gold and silver prices so high now...

 

Since the people on this thread have an interest, you might be interested to read this accumulation from the public ( and a few politicians I noticed) when the mint asked for public comments on melting of copper cents and nickels .

https://www.governmentattic.org/docs/US-Mint_comment-prohibit-export-melt-pennies-nickels.pdf

 

58 pages......

How about the Cliff Note version?