by Steve Candidus (Steve C.)
Before I get started I should mention that I am not an economics major, I am a history buff, so please understand my limitations as well as my strengths.
For those of us not able to commit any large sums of money to buy gold or even silver there is an option for you/us.
I do recognize that there are some big changes coming in our economic and political system. Inflation will be bad and we might even see what’s called hyper inflation. The US dollar is going to tank to the point of being literally worthless. The pattern has been repeated countless times over the centuries and the result is always the same. We – the little people – will lose everything.
Although precious metals like gold and silver will hold their value I expect that the US Federal Government will confiscate it and again make it illegal to own.
Historically when the paper money becomes worthless governments simply restructure it (reduce its value).
The pattern of reduction in value of the paper money is that usually their first reduction is 100 to one – meaning that the government will announce that a $1 bill is now worth what a penny was worth. A $100 bill becomes the new $1 bill.
However, in the past when governments have restructured their paper dollars the coins were usually not affected. They figure that the coinage will be used up relatively quickly so they don’t pay much attention to it.
What that translates to for us down here in the trenches is that since the coin values remain the same even though that lowly old dime didn’t increase, it didn’t devalue either so its ‘relative value’ goes up 100 times. It would be worth ten bucks.
There usually follows a second devaluation of either 10 to one or 100 to one. The results are just as devastating to we-the-people as the first. Only the well connected escape and they will eventually buy up everything in site for fractions of pennies on the then tanked dollar.
This brings us to my nickels.
Under the above scenario (which I expect will happen as sure as the sun rises in the east) these nickels will not increase per se, but their ‘relative value’ will increase first by 100 times and then either by 10 or 100 times more. A lowly nickel will become the equivalent first of a $5 bill, then of either a $50 bill or even a $500 bill.
I chose nickels as a hedge against the Feds including the coinage this time in their dollar devaluations. The nickel should be immune because it is the only coin in the US money system that is actually worth more than its face value. A current nickel is 75% copper and 25% nickel. Its metal content is worth over 6 cents and with copper soaring it will soon be getting close to 10 cents.
The US government simply cannot continue to take a loss like that and they will eventually switch to making them out of some other material like aluminum or plastic or something. It is coming.
The nickel is also a very small unit and can be easily negotiated – each will be worth $5, $50, or even $500 eventually. A $2 roll would then have a relative worth between $200 and $20,000. Each $100 box would be a $10,000 to $1,000,000 gold mine in copper and nickel.
Remember, it’s not that they will increase; it’s that paper dollars will decrease… a lot. It’s the relative worth of them that makes them valuable.
Nickels are also small enough that they might just stay under the radar screen of government scrutiny. The government snoops and pries into every facet of our lives now. The control freaks are completely out of control. Nickels might escape them. I don’t think that gold and silver will. Platinum and other ‘smart investments’ will likely all be raided by the control freaks at the behest of the special interests that they serve.
They are also very unwieldy. That means that they are very hard to steal. A thief trying to make of with a $100 box or two of nickels should be easy to find. He’ll be the one in the ER with his balls hanging down around his ankles. Each box weighs over 50 pounds.
Might be worth considering saving some…
Well, one point to consider is that it is illegal to melt down nickels. Same goes for pennies. That does not hold for silver coins, which you can melt. The penalty for melting nickels is pretty steep.
And as a result, I believe a nickel will remain a fractional part of whatever value a dollar has. I do not believe it will transpire as the author suggests, for the reason above.
Want to use something, use silver would be my advice.
I was just going through some old silver dollars I inherited. A few 1880s my dad thought would one day be valuable. Turns out they minted millions that year. So they are worth the value of silver, plus a buck or two. Bummer.
By the way, all silver coins are worth more than their face value. And lots of them are still in circulation. It is not just nickels.
The only thing that will be more worthless than devalued paper money will be the unenforceable paper laws laws of the illegitimate regime. Copper and nickel have real value and melting them down is pretty simple.
Melting them down is simple. Making them into something worthwhile, not so much. You know anything about actually using something like nickel? You know what nickel is primarily used for? Making stainless steel. Or plating. You know how to make stainless steel? You know how much energy that takes? What about plating? You know how to plate nickel? Uh-huh. Hey! I am going to melt down nickel! Great! What are you gonna do with it? Ummmmmm. I dunno. You would have no means of doing anything with it. None whatsoever. Nobody in a crisis is going to want your melted down nickel.
How about making copper pipe? You know how to do that? Extrude copper wire?
Do you have any idea how hard and energy intensive it is to actually convert lumps of nickel and copper into anything useful? Clearly not.
It could be hes thinking of melting into bars for trade purposes. Metals do have value and there is likely someone who would trade on a negotiated value for that metal. Legality doesn’t factor in at all. If banned or illehal, it just opens a black market for the product.
Barter will be considered black market once the money is gone because it not taxable… Actually it already is in some part of Europe
it is already the law that bartering has to be reported to the irs if over a certain amount,even if it is a 100% legal transaction–
back around ’79-’80,when inflation got so bad a bartering movement developed & the govt stuck it’s greedy hands into the equation–
Did not remember that law, got to admit in CO life was pretty good in 79 80 so outside an very occasional garage sale, I wasn’t doing any of it. On the other hand it doesn’t surprises me at all. Greed and theft to feed the politicians.
The value of goods, in the situation being referred too, has little or nothing to do with whether one can turn the good into something else. It’s a trade marker for most users.
What would the average person melt silver for (that is what you suggest to save)? How many people would have the resources and knowledge to do it and what would they make that would have much use in a high/hyper inflation scenario? Silver also would just act, for most users, as a trade marker.
Let’s change your language above and insert silver instead of nickel – there isn’t much difference.
In a crisis there will, of course, be buyers for melted silver and melted metals of multiple kinds. They won’t be your neighbor (they’ll want to trade you silver for food/shelter/water/heat/etc.), they will be commerical or institutional users looking to acquire inventory – and they might trade a lot of value for anything they can get their hands on.
Why would anyone need to produce anything other than an ingot with nickel or copper from melting down nickels? One needs only render them into ingots to resell them at a premium to scrap buyers (as ‘clean’ metals). I love it when people talk about the “stiff” penalties from breaking a law. Not only do you have to be caught, you have to be convicted. Not really the “You’ll go to jail!” proposition most make it out to be.
Will llpoh turn in all his silver and gold when the government makes it illegal to own due to the “stiff” penalties? Does he need to make gold into something worthwhile to justify owning or selling it? Some of us are just middlemen making a living in system D; a forge is easy to build, and melted metals are just… melted metals.
Clearly you are keeping yourself in the box.
Nothing stops you from buying or cobbling together a small foundry, melting down nickels or anything else, like manhole covers, and taking the resulting materials to a scrap dealer who will happily take your unidentified copper, nickel, etc. I know at least one guy who will happily take any copper or brass I find. In exchange, he makes me brass knuckles.
Apmex has even the most damaged 1880 silver dollars for 35$, if it is decent its worth 40$ and if close to original 45 and up. Significantly better than a Buck or 2 over spot, it has .77 oz.
This
In a collapse scenario, no one is going to give a shit whether melting down their nickels is legal or not. Now, how valuable will an ugly slab of nickel/copper be…that’s a different question.
Llpoh – You missed my point.
It doesn’t really matter that melting down nickels is illegal. It’s their value in their metallic content that counts.
If the dollar goes to zero and a nickel is still worth between 5 cents and 10 cents then it retains its value.
If the dollar is worth zero and a nickel is still worth something (anything) then it’s the difference that counts.
Steve – I got it. But you cannot melt them down. Scrap dealers will not buy them for that purpose. The steel makers will not use them. Etc. They will be unable or extremely difficult to be used for their metal content.
The day fiat money will be worthless will be the time barter will become the new money: the exchange of skills, garden food (if you can keep it from thieves) results of husbandry (eggs poultry milk from cow goat or sheep. But perhaps one of most important bartering items would be those that would affect certain addiction. I’m not talking about dope here, that would be dangerous (and would attract the real dealers) but I was thinking of hooch and cigs. Do you have tobacco seeds? Start growing! Do you have fruit trees? Start the fire under your still. I wonder how many pounds of flour could I trade for a pint of moonshine
A much cheaper booze source is potatoes. Potatoes are super easy to grow, have a relatively long growing season, and for most people can be grown in the woods away from thieves.
Fruit trees are very regional, require much more maintenance, and harvesting is harder, and you can’t really hide the trees or bushes as well as you can with potatoes.
Being of Polish ancestry I should have thought of that, Potato Vodka is one of the finest. Thanks for the reminder. Potatoes also have a tremendous yield per square yard.
From one Pol to another:
https://drizly.com/liquor/vodka/luksusowa-potato-vodka/p1232
I had to move to France in 2008. I find Luksusowa in Luxembourg for about 18 euros a fifth. Before the big lie, I use to to get it at the source. In 2016, a liter was 29 zloty about $7.50.
Realestate – you have no idea what you are talking about. No offense. Potatoes are about the worst thing imaginable for making booze. Try it sometime and get back to me. Making booze out of potatoes is a no go. Corn, yes. Sugar yes. Barley yes. Honey, yes. Fruit, yes if you are careful and don’t poison yourself.
But not potatoes. It is too hard, too inefficient, too messy, with too little yield. A TON of potatoes will yield 25 gallons of pure ethanol. A TON of corn will yield over 100 gallons of pure ethanol. And of course sugar will yield about 150 gallons per ton, by memory. The yield difference, the mess, the work, etc. make potatoes a poor choice, unless there are no other options. Btw – it costs about six times more per pound to grow potatoes vs corn. And you get 1/4 the yield per pound. Thems the facts Jack.
You have been watching too many movies.
Try Chopin, pure potato vodka from Poland, it’s not the only one mind you. There several others like Luksusowa (which was in existence even during the soviet era)
Haha see my response to your poast above.
Luksasowa crushes all, IMO.
Mixes well with coffee.
Agreed… see my response above 😛
Numbers from a moderately experienced home gardener not using much for chemicals on good land that has been tilled for 10-plus years: Three four-pound bags of nothing special potatoes from the grocery store left to grow sprouts then planted made 150 pounds of potatoes in a 16×16 ft. plot. Your yield might be more than that, or zero. Go – get off of your keyboard and go do it. Also, a hint : I found that potatoes vines with wire cages stood up, got more sun, yielded measurably more. On an adjacent plot of the same size sweet corn yielded hundreds of pounds of stalks and leaves, a bit over 10 gallons of cobs to be steamed, stripped, and frozen. Bulk corn is useless unless you have a freezer – or a still. With a still you probably need a source of barley for the enzymes to break up the grain, thats how it works for beer.
Works the same way for potato. Gotta have enzymes. Why is there so little potato vodka? Too damn hard, yields too low.
It crossed my mind that the government would then make potato possession illegal. Grow weed but not potatoes… LOL psstt buddy, wanna buy a lb of yukon gold potatoes???
Hilarious !!!! My Grandma was telling my brothers and me she would go to Gdansk (about 40 miles from the farm) once a week to sell butter cream eggs and spuds pulling a small cart without horse to make sure the krauts didn’t hear her and she would bring back fabric or iron or copper or anything to make or fix the tools at the farm.
Grandma was tough; just walking 25 miles is rough.
Tell me about it. Although very petite, 5 feet tall, she could work from 5 AM to 10 PM literally non stop.
Well, A grade shine is not cheap. And it needs to be safely made. Good equipment helps. To make decent, cheap booze in volume you need a biggish boiler and a reasonably sized still.
As I am a bourbon lover, I have studied this stuff a bit, so will make a stab in the dark about the making of booze.
For instance, a 25 gallon fluted still with a condensing section can give you around 1.7 gallons of reasonably good 95% ethanol, perhaps a bit more when allowing for recycling heads and tails, or roughly 4 gallons of an 80 proof vodka approximation. It will require around 35 pounds of sugar to get that amount.
If a person wants corn liquor, you will need about 30 pounds milled corn, and about half that in malted barley/malted rye. You can sub in some sugar, but lose some flavor. You would get around 3 gallons of 80 proof shine. There is substantial work involved in the mashing, straining, distilling.
A 25 gallon boiler, plus an appropriate sized fluted and condensing still, plus a grain masher, etc. that would do both shine and vodka would be at least a few thousand dollars. If a person is good with solder, and knows what they are doing, and does not lead poison themselves, no leaks to blow themselves up with, and no blockages to blow themselves up with, they could get a pot still set up for much less, say probably $1500.
If those quantities are not sufficient, the price of-the setup would skyrocket.
So, a gallon of unaged and unoaked shine is worth around ((30 pounds of corn plus 15 pounds malted barley))/3 gallons = 15 pounds of flour plus labour. So say at least 50 pounds of flour for a gallon of 80 proof shine. Or around six pounds for a pint.
And as always, caveat emptor with moonshine.
I wasn’t talking about making great stuff for myself but rather make cheap stuff to barter with.. I would keep the good stuff for myself
Thanks Padre, but I live in France since 2008 and here distilling is completely illegal and you can’t buy any supplies. I do however know how to make a small still. There are plenty of how to sites online. And it’s fairly simple.
All you need is sugar and regular old yeast, a boiler and a still.
Grace – I am familiar with that site. Good info there.
I can report actual numbers. Using 3 5-gallon buckets, I can make a mash of 5 lbs. malted barley, 2 boxes of corn flakes and 20 pounds of sugar. This gets distilled in a homemade still made from a 35 quart stainless steel stock pot and 3/8″ copper tubing run through a 5-gallon bucket with water as a condenser. Each 5-gallon batch gets distilled and the distillate kept. Then when all 3 are done, the distillate is re-distilled and diluted down to 120 proof for aging. This usually results in 12 to 14 quarts of 120 proof whiskey, which sits in the jar for a couple months along with oak chips made from used Jack Daniels barrels. When those are aged, they are poured into a 1 liter glass bottle and proofed down to 100. So I get 12 to 14 liters of 100 proof whiskey for the price of the ingredients and inputs (around $25, so around $2 per quart). I’d need about 50 pounds of flour for one of those jars.
You can get maximum around 9.8 pounds of alcohol out of 20 pounds sugar, around 1.2 pounds out of the barley you mention, our around 6 litres pure. Or as you say 12 litres at 100 proof.
But they would be 100 proof shit. Truly. With a pot still you might get 8 litres of decent 100 proof, with a fluted still a bit more. Heads and tails are generally a third to even a half of all produced. Good shiners will toss/recycle as much as half. A lot can be recycled nto ethanol ie vodka. But it is no longer shine.
Have to remember to keep the fermentation on the cool side to reduce fusel alcohols from the yeast. When you see Tickle and the Boys roll a Mason jar of finished ‘shine back and forth under the light it’s to judge clarity and purity. Fusels aged in wood can make you sick, blind, or dead.
👍
Interesting read this morning. I just finished up a plumbing project with a friend and at the end there was a lot of old copper left over. And so it goes into the place where I keep old salvage copper. Ditto the brass fittings. While some of it is unusable due to size, most of it can be repurposed in another project and the rest will neither rot nor lose value- in fact it may at some point be worth selling as scrap.
This is the trick- to learn to see the value in things beyond the moment and to respect what others would consider to be worthless in order to make it utile.
I’m heading down to Boston this morning to take apart a greenhouse that someone wants off the property. They don’t see the value in the greenhouse because they have jobs which pay enough so that they can trade their investment of time at work into groceries for their home. For me I see the value in trading my labor today for being able to provide food in the future.
An awful lot of this is perspective.
Great post.
Thanks for your words HSF.
I used to save all of the copper gutters that I replaced with new aluminum ones when I was a kid. I’d take them down to the scrap yard and sell them. I did pretty well.
It was all just thinking with this essay, but I’m glad that you found it interesting…
I think any hard asset would be good to have for bartering, including nickels. I have prepared by storing pre-63 silver coins. Although, I’m not sure why the gov would try to confiscate gold or silver as you eluded to. In 1933, the U.S. was actually still on the gold standard. Roosevelt signed the executive order forbidding the hoarding of gold so he could devalue the dollar. From what I’ve read, there was very little confiscation done by the authorities during that time. I’m not saying they won’t do it, but there would need to be a very compelling reason.
FDR’s move had the effect of making gold coin property of the Federal Reserve. Before then, gold coin was portable property, that is, the property of the bearer The US mints would strike gold coins for individuals from gold that they brought to the mint.
In the aftermath of FDR’s EO, any gold coin held by individuals was subject to seizure. The banks turned gold coin as well as gold certificate notes over to the Fed and only people who kept their gold hidden kept it.
Send me all your 64’s for face value.
You’re a funny guy
The purchasing power of a nickel, will remain a about 5 cents. That is a good thing if the dollar goes to zero.
The article, i think, is slightly confusing in stating that a nickel will be worth $50 or $500 in the future. Might be better stated to say that a $50 bill will be worth a nickel and because of the metal content, a nickel will remain around 5 cents.
Just my 2 cents.
It is a little confusing in the article, but the idea is that the metal in a nickel already costs 6 cents. If currency were devalued by 100x, the metal in the nickel would cost $6. Right now, you can go exchange paper fiat, for metal fiat. The metal version will retain its value, which is already higher than its cost of production.
An old pre-65 USA silver 50 cent piece is going for around $12 for the silver content lately. While it might feel like inflation is nil think about a 24x increase in 55 years.
The bad news is that, this time, they swept up the coins first. Good luck finding enough nickels to amount to anything. Banks now get a ration of rolled coins from the carriers, and the change collection machines bag coins for collection by those carriers, cutting banks out of the loop except as collectors for Brinks, etc.
I found this out a several years ago when it became impossible to buy $1k in rolled coins from banks in order to search for silver coins. Anyway, most banks have closed their lobbies and rolled coin doesn’t carry well in the pneumatic tubes that serve the drive-in banking lanes.
If I can figure out how to use nickles as ammo I’ll be rich. I’m gonna make a nickle gun. Works using rotation like a frisbee. I saw that in “The Matrix” once, it oughta work…. 🙂
You can load a 12 ga. shell with dimes. Don’t fire one through a shotgun with a full choke, though.
Buy seeds for growing your own food and trading. Get them while you can. For you city dwellers, leave the cities while you can. Food will be used to control people.
Amen to that……….
Truth that
No no, if you are a liberal, please stay where you are and take the Shot; support the $15 minimum wage and the Universal Basic Income.
Liberals don’t garden… So I think he’s referring to those folks that have a brain.
I think he was being facetious
Its amazing to watch my lefty vegetarian neighbors : not garden, shop at whole foods, pay a grass cutting crew, then complain about being sick & tired all the time.
No way. You city people, stay right where you are. We don’t need you polluting the rest of the country with your dumb asses. Especially you Yankee fucks and California retards. Stay right where you are. You NYC asshats can stay on your stupid island and tell yourselves how awesome it is.
Several years back Kyle Bass bought $1MM of nickels from the Dallas Fed. The metal content of one was around 8¢ then. He sold them to a Mexican company for a nice 20% or so profit. They promptly melted them down.
$200K+ the EZway.
1984 and older pennies are pure copper, close to 3 cents today and the copper chart is going up like crypto.
Speaking of crypto, it is here you will witness the real battlefield for control of what’s next.
Add DeFi to your search bar to glimpse the front.
To all of the naysayers, congratulations, you added Bill Gates and Janet Yellen to your roster this week.
So that is nice.
“1984 and older pennies are pure copper”
No, they aren’t. They are bronze. Pure copper cent and penny coins went out with powdered wigs.
Actually that is 1981 and older. Some 1982 are also bronze buit some are the copper plated zinc. Easy to tell the difference though by the ring or thud sound made when dropping on a hard surface.
https://coincollectingenterprises.com/information/penny-facts/zinc-copper/
Steve – your idea may have merit, except we will be going to all electronic money in the very near future. No more paper bills and no more metal coins. If you have noticed, there is a coin shortage and I have yet to find a reasonable explanation for the shortage. I think it is the first step in electronic funds.
Think how much the fed can save by closing down the mints. No more salaries, taxes, insurance, rent, utilities as well as the metal, special paper and ink. It will be a big plus for them and any devaluation will have the same effect on denominations.
The argument that makes the most sense to me, TN, is that, when the credit system collapses, ALL interstate trade will cease: no pay, no ship. From China to US or Detroit to Chicago. If this happens before the transition to digital, there could be a span of months/years BEFORE the system can be implemented, and that interim is the worst-case Mad Max scenario where nickels may actually be worth having on hand.
But probably not as valuable as lead, brass, and dry goods.
I have nickels and pre-83 pennies, just in case. Have read the book and understand how bad it get.
When the credit system collapses, is when you will need your brass and lead, as well as other items that will have real value. Most people do not understand the underlying value of metal coins, except silver and gold, and your nickels and pre-83 pennies will be difficult to use in the initial barter system.
Several years ago, a guy told me he figured he could always trade a box of .22LR for gasoline or bread. It made sense then and makes even more sense now.
Yup. I could also use another thousand rounds or so of 9mm. Wish I could find them at less than ass-rape prices.
Isn’t that the truth. There was a really good buy on ammo on Black Friday ’19 and I picked up quite a bit, but wished I had doubled my purchase. I doubt we will ever see reasonably priced ammo again. If it becomes available, I expect VP Biden to levy a hefty tax on it.
Perhaps patriots could rethink the black powder items. Black powder is easy to make and ammo is melted lead. At least for hunting keeping the modern stuff for self defense. Also bow and arrows, crossbow as well
The Bible says we will throw our gold into the streets when we need food and there isn’t any to buy. Ha ha, put some coins out and when the trash come to steal them, bag’em for dinner like wild game.
“bag’em”
there’ll be a lot of that going on. and instead of trading a box of 22lr for bread, they’re more likely to use a round or two to get the bread.
Yes
“pre-83 pennies”
half the 1982 pennies are zinc – the changeover was in the middle of the year.
Cash FRN’s are a liability on the Feds ballance sheet
Coins are an asset on the Feds balance sheet.
Balance sheet info starts at 5:57
TN Patriot – You said:
That’s partly my point.
If there isn’t any other money supply because the dollar goes to zero, and the nickel retains its value, then its worth something.
I didn’t mean for it to replace the other tangibles that we should keep. Like a good supply of ammo, but if it helps to make a transfer of other goods possible in a way that doesn’t have to use the electronic currency than its worth it.
Steve, I like your idea a lot, you should watch the video I posted above to really understand why all coins are important. I heard a few years ago they were going to get rid of the penny and nickel because of production costs. I bought two boxes each and I still have them.
An interesting video StackingStock. Thanks for it.
Good for you on your coins purchase. You know at the very least that they won’t go to waste…
I sold a box of brass 9mm for $20 today, I paid $10 in 2013, I felt bad for the guy, so I sold him a box.
Sort of like when the Venezuelans were using silver dimes to make purchases after their economy crashed.
The coin shortage is a deliberate move and will support the elimination of cash. Using cash for retail purchases makes the absence of coins an annoyance because retailers will tend to round the total up or down (who would want to round it down for you?).
People holding cash for emergencies hold FRNs, and C-notes are convenient for making the cash more portable. The next step to eliminate cash purchases would be to eliminate all notes smaller than $100.
Incrementalism will help them phase out cash without alarming too many people all at once.
“The pattern of reduction in value of the paper money is that usually their first reduction is 100 to one – meaning that the government will announce that a $1 bill is now worth what a penny was worth. A $100 bill becomes the new $1 bill.”
True. It has happened in South America a bunch of time. However, not to my knowledge has it every happened with a Reserve Currency. As it stands, the whole world has a stake in the dollar. That’s what has kept it afloat for so long. That system must change…but I have no idea how. An over-night devaluation like you suggest doesn’t seem plausible with the dollar.
Now, none of this changes the reasonable idea of hoarding nickels. It’s a sound idea and could pay off big, in your version or in other ways….potentially all coins could also be used in barter situations at some point down the road.
Still, only a small amount. Silver, Lead and Brass, then Gold…and then maybe some nickels.
grid down all the paper will wear away, but the coins will survive and be unduplicable for a long time – there’s your post-apocalypse monetary system.
I don’t plan to be coin collecting in the apocalypse. If you try to get me to take the useless fiat of a dead nation, I’m going to laugh at you. If the dollar is dead, don’t expect anyone to want it, even if it is hard to copy. If we can’t create our own, i.e. the silver bugs who mint their own ingots, we’ll do just fine with barter.
I stock trade goods for just this purpose. Booze, small tools, extra batteries, lighters, sewing kits, etc.
The OP is trying to make his point the hard way, but it is interesting conceptually. We already have some great examples of the debasement of our coinage. Prior to 1965, U.S. coins contained silver as was prescribed in the U.S. Constitution, but was eliminated in the Coinage Act of 1965. As the purchasing value of the U.S. debt dollar decreased, the cost of making sound coinage become more expensive and exceeded the seigniorage and eventually the face value of the coin. This happened again in 1982 with the composition of the penny being changed from copper to zinc. As of this last year, pennies cost approximately 0.017 to 0.019 to make thus exceeding the face value. The nickel, as the OP states, costs approximately 9 cents to make.
Other empires faced the same thing and we seem to have lost the lessons of yesteryear. As the debts of the empire start to make the currency lose its purchasing power, coins lock in their inherent value due to their metallic composition. When the value of the underlying compositional metals of those coins start to dramatically exceed their face value, people do what they always do… they hoard… or debt currency will always chase sound money. I always check my change to pull pre-1982 pennies and throw them into a jar. Why should I let the government further drain resources from We, The People?
Changes are coming! The penny and the nickel will either be pulled from circulation or will be further debased using cheaper metals. The COVID fugue created a faux coinage shortage and, under that umbrella, it is possible for the government to push for changes that have already been contemplated. The writing is on the wall as eventually we will be forced into a digital currency because it achieves everything that TPTB want to see happen. Under this scenario, paper will die for it has no inherent value and coins will also disappear. The government will suck them back and melt them back to their base metals to sell or use. This may not happen today or tomorrow, but it is coming. Coins in the black market may become a thing and eventually smelters/scrapyards will create a path for those hoarded materials to make their back into a useful purpose. Just my two cents… pun intended!
To all the guys here who think that “pennies” (US one cent coins) are made of copper:
One cent coins were bronze before the switch to a zinc alloy plated with copper, so they were made with copper, not of copper. You’ll find all of the alloys used for US coins in the red book.
Out of curiosity I just did a bit of research on melting nickel. Turns out it is not easy, and turns out that it is a specialist job, and many scrap dealers will not even handle it as a result. Also seems amateur attempts to melt it (2651F melting point) can destroy the value, and even see the nickel oxidise and disappear. That for sure I did not know.
Nickels may have some decent value as trade chips, but why I really do not know as they are very difficult to turn into useful items.
I’ve never done it. I’ve only smelted lead, but I read copper melts at 1984*F. Could you not melt out the copper and leave the nickel behind?
There must be a whole lot of saving going on. Three Harbor Freight stores on the front range were out of .53 cu ft. digital wall safes. One can save many silver eagles in them.
another reason 4 the coin shortage,if it really is being artificially created,is to force retailers into pressuring people to use credit/debit cards–
lots of retailers prefer cash & some give a 3% discount 4 paying cash–3% on a $50-60 restaurant tab adds up–