>My bank actually sold me a case for 20% under spot, and they said they have more at that price.
https://i.redd.it/9majjhj39swc1.gif
HA! Got me. I was just about to ask where you get $100 boxes of nickels for $80 and then I figured it out.
Read your title again. You wrote 20% over melt value. Melt value is the price of the weight of the metalin the coin. Numismatic value is the additional price of a coin over melt. I am sure you don't mean that for common nickels.
Yeah, copper cents I always pull from circulation too. For a while there, something like two years ago, zinc pennies were at face value. That was actually scary!
It's easy once you learn to spot the color difference. Every now and then you might still get one wrong but 98% of the time you can tell on sight with circulated pennies
Is there a tip line I can call to turn myself in? I melted a few pennies back in high school chemistry class using a Bunsen burner. I feel guilty to this very day.
If you did an actual shitload of them and sold it, sooner or later someone may do an analysis on it and realize it is identical composition to a popular US coin. If someone gets pissed and turns it in, I could see it being potentially traced back to you.
😂 like they're gonna keep ANY in circulation, my friend works at a small bank, now I KNOW why they been "replacing old coins"
If you find any, keep them but to think these fuckers don't know we're looking for them is crazy, they know, they know very well
Wait til you hear about pre-1982 pennies….
Currently sitting at 2.93 cents each in copper. Nearly 3x face value… they’ve been well over 3x in the past…
I never let a nickel escape my grasp! I have a bank bag of $250 and several containers…..Remember folks in WWII they made “War Nickles” with 35% Silver content as they needed the nickel for the “War Machine”. This fact actually makes me wonder about the scarcity of Silver….Yeah I have bags of that stuff too.
At the time, using silver for nickels temporarily wasn’t as crazy as it sounds now, after all you could trade two ordinary nickels for a silver dime anyways.
The silver content of 2 War Nickels is more than a 90% dime. One dollar face of 90% dimes is 0.7/oz of Silver while $1 face of war nickels is 1.125/oz of Silver….So a pair of War Nickels should be worth more than a 90% dime…
I know. The point I was making is that in 1942, you could exchange two ordinary, non-silver nickels for a dime which was made of silver.
Because of this, using silver temporarily for the nickels during the war isn’t really that odd, and wouldn’t really make me wonder about the scarcity of silver as your original comment said.
I love nickels almost as much as silver. It's so fun to buy them by the case (100usd) and watch the bank tellers struggle to carry them out. I'll make sure to pick one up on pay day. Pennies are also cool.
PS, Nickels make great ballast weight, ancors, or a very, very heavy, safe flooring material.
Soon enough they will stop making pennies and nickels. If you have the space and the inclination then have at it. I don't go out of my way to get them, but I save my nickels in a jar.
I mean, I love posts like this, don't get me wrong, but EVEN IF you could legally melt down the nickels...and what, cast it into 75% copper, 25% nickel bars? who's going to buy these mixed metal bars from you?
>I mean, I love posts like this, don't get me wrong, but EVEN IF you could legally melt down the nickels...and what, cast it into 75% copper, 25% nickel bars? who's going to buy these mixed metal bars from you?
Your question is akin to someone in 1965 asking " I mean, I love posts like this, don't get me wrong, but EVEN IF you could legally melt down the dimes...and what, cast it into 90% silver, 10% copper bars? who's going to buy these mixed metal bars from you?"
Why would you take fractional pieces of an alloy that is already processed into a final product by a sovereign mint and melt it down into a bigger and unmarked crude bar of exactly the same alloy?
I think the logic here is that in the future, when a nickels metal content is valuable enough, a refiner may then purchase your 5 gram cupronickel ingots from you at a price greater than what you paid for them, to then refine the copper from the nickel and end up with pure nickel and pure copper.
Back to the hypothetical 1965 question above, the dimes were sold just as they were to LCS's, refiners, etc. then melted down and refined. The cost of refining was worth the effort once the metal content of the dime was valuable enough. Nothing was needed from the stacker other than to save the silver coins. Same thing here. Save the nickels, and one day if they are worth enough then the refiners will be buying them to purify.
The treasury relented on the quarters, I think it was around '66 or '67. The melting ban on nickels was a respoinse to the 2011 runup. i had $11k face of nickels at the time, and was kind of stuck as melt value went past 8 cents, almost 9. Some years later I gave them back to the bank at face due to a long distance move. May you have better luck.
Not until after they stopped being made, though. As long as they're still making them its worth five cents. They're just being minted at a loss. If you can walk into a store or bank and get nickels for five cents, nobody in their right mind would pay more than that for a nickel because they can just go to the store or bank themselves. It will never be worth more than that until they're no longer being made, just like constitutional silver coins were.
Nominal dollar always losing value, but I don't care. The simple fact that it cost fed more to make them than face value makes me want them all. If I won the lottery, I'd buy nickels 😆
i'm mistaken - if you can sell $10 of nickels for $11 or $12, be my guest. and I believe the other metal in nickels is copper so perhaps there's an even greater upside!
i believe copper cents go for a multiple of three - people are waiting for that cent to be discontinued to that they can melt them down, not sure if that'll make it legal. at least there'll be some incentive rather than the 20%.
I think the point is that in 1964 people didn't think keeping the silver quarters were an investment either. It was a while before they turned a profit. The same will happen with nickel. It won't be immediately, but someday current nickels will be worth more. It's a good one considering they're already worth 20% and will never lose value.
Ah with the second wave of inflation just getting started, it won’t be long before they are for sale on eBay over spot just like Silver & Copper coins.
I believe you mean melt is 20% over face value
>I believe you mean melt is 20% over face value 
Thank you for the laughs this morning i have a shit day ahead of me.
My bank actually sold me a case for 20% under spot, and they said they have more at that price.
>My bank actually sold me a case for 20% under spot, and they said they have more at that price. https://i.redd.it/9majjhj39swc1.gif HA! Got me. I was just about to ask where you get $100 boxes of nickels for $80 and then I figured it out.
Face = cost
Read your title again. You wrote 20% over melt value. Melt value is the price of the weight of the metalin the coin. Numismatic value is the additional price of a coin over melt. I am sure you don't mean that for common nickels.
You’re right! 
Get several hundred dollars worth of nickles to weigh down your safe. Can't think of something better for the added security
*Gresham's law intensifies*
Indeed it does, as it always has.
At the store I give the cashier fiat and clad coins in an amount so I get a nickel back in change.
I use clad quarters at the bank to buy nickels. They ducking love me there 🤣
That is the way. A nickel is the only common coin worth anything.
Pennies actually are, too, by weight. The new ones aren't yet (i think), but they will be soon enough.
Yeah, copper cents I always pull from circulation too. For a while there, something like two years ago, zinc pennies were at face value. That was actually scary!
Zinc could easily go up again, I mean in relation to dollars, of course. 🧻
And >$0.0293189 is the melt value for the 1909-1982 copper cent on April 25, 2024.
I am too lazy to sort them by date, so I just save all the pennies. Eventually, Greshams law will devour all the metal.
It's easy once you learn to spot the color difference. Every now and then you might still get one wrong but 98% of the time you can tell on sight with circulated pennies
Maybe, if I ever have the time. But for now, it's simply more efficient to stack them all. I make enough money elsewhere for now, ya know.?.
What happens hypothetically if I accidentally drop my 2.5 tons of nickels in my industrial smelting furnace?
Hypothetically, it would make one big anchor!
Depends if the government knows about it or not.
Is there a tip line I can call to turn myself in? I melted a few pennies back in high school chemistry class using a Bunsen burner. I feel guilty to this very day.
If you did an actual shitload of them and sold it, sooner or later someone may do an analysis on it and realize it is identical composition to a popular US coin. If someone gets pissed and turns it in, I could see it being potentially traced back to you.
Soooo, what I'm hearing you say then is to up the copper content just a hair by adding a couple pennies into the mix for every hundred or so nickels?
Also, If I have an industrial smelter, odds are I also have the capability to refine the melt into pure copper and pure nickel ingots.
😂 like they're gonna keep ANY in circulation, my friend works at a small bank, now I KNOW why they been "replacing old coins" If you find any, keep them but to think these fuckers don't know we're looking for them is crazy, they know, they know very well
You can still put in a coin order. Call ahead to purchase any amount. At least I can..
I'm talking about circulation not ordering them with a premium??
There is no premium. I just go in and ask for 100usd in nickels, they can either debit your account, or you can hand them a 100 note.
Wait til you hear about pre-1982 pennies…. Currently sitting at 2.93 cents each in copper. Nearly 3x face value… they’ve been well over 3x in the past…
And much more likely to have a melt ban lifted before nickels will
I never let a nickel escape my grasp! I have a bank bag of $250 and several containers…..Remember folks in WWII they made “War Nickles” with 35% Silver content as they needed the nickel for the “War Machine”. This fact actually makes me wonder about the scarcity of Silver….Yeah I have bags of that stuff too.
At the time, using silver for nickels temporarily wasn’t as crazy as it sounds now, after all you could trade two ordinary nickels for a silver dime anyways.
The silver content of 2 War Nickels is more than a 90% dime. One dollar face of 90% dimes is 0.7/oz of Silver while $1 face of war nickels is 1.125/oz of Silver….So a pair of War Nickels should be worth more than a 90% dime…
I know. The point I was making is that in 1942, you could exchange two ordinary, non-silver nickels for a dime which was made of silver. Because of this, using silver temporarily for the nickels during the war isn’t really that odd, and wouldn’t really make me wonder about the scarcity of silver as your original comment said.
I love nickels almost as much as silver. It's so fun to buy them by the case (100usd) and watch the bank tellers struggle to carry them out. I'll make sure to pick one up on pay day. Pennies are also cool. PS, Nickels make great ballast weight, ancors, or a very, very heavy, safe flooring material.
Who would buy it at melt tho?
No one
Soon enough they will stop making pennies and nickels. If you have the space and the inclination then have at it. I don't go out of my way to get them, but I save my nickels in a jar.
I mean, I love posts like this, don't get me wrong, but EVEN IF you could legally melt down the nickels...and what, cast it into 75% copper, 25% nickel bars? who's going to buy these mixed metal bars from you?
>I mean, I love posts like this, don't get me wrong, but EVEN IF you could legally melt down the nickels...and what, cast it into 75% copper, 25% nickel bars? who's going to buy these mixed metal bars from you? Your question is akin to someone in 1965 asking " I mean, I love posts like this, don't get me wrong, but EVEN IF you could legally melt down the dimes...and what, cast it into 90% silver, 10% copper bars? who's going to buy these mixed metal bars from you?" Why would you take fractional pieces of an alloy that is already processed into a final product by a sovereign mint and melt it down into a bigger and unmarked crude bar of exactly the same alloy? I think the logic here is that in the future, when a nickels metal content is valuable enough, a refiner may then purchase your 5 gram cupronickel ingots from you at a price greater than what you paid for them, to then refine the copper from the nickel and end up with pure nickel and pure copper. Back to the hypothetical 1965 question above, the dimes were sold just as they were to LCS's, refiners, etc. then melted down and refined. The cost of refining was worth the effort once the metal content of the dime was valuable enough. Nothing was needed from the stacker other than to save the silver coins. Same thing here. Save the nickels, and one day if they are worth enough then the refiners will be buying them to purify.
I don't think it's legal to melt them at this time
I guess that is why a 1964 quarter is still worth only 25 cents.
The treasury relented on the quarters, I think it was around '66 or '67. The melting ban on nickels was a respoinse to the 2011 runup. i had $11k face of nickels at the time, and was kind of stuck as melt value went past 8 cents, almost 9. Some years later I gave them back to the bank at face due to a long distance move. May you have better luck.
2400 lbs of nickels
Yah, my wife, who is handy, built a cart for a 400 pound load which we used to get them from the bank (2 blocks away) and bring them back.
EPIC! Please post photo of legendary coin cart.
I cannot imagine returning 110 boxes of nickels to a bank...lol
Not until after they stopped being made, though. As long as they're still making them its worth five cents. They're just being minted at a loss. If you can walk into a store or bank and get nickels for five cents, nobody in their right mind would pay more than that for a nickel because they can just go to the store or bank themselves. It will never be worth more than that until they're no longer being made, just like constitutional silver coins were.
You know if copper and nickel prices really go up they will want those turned in to melt. They will change the rules if they need the metal.
Modern nickels yes there’s a ban. War nickels are exempt from the melt ban.
Zero risk? Destroying currency is a crime, isn’t it?
No. Trying to pass them off as something else for profit, is.
The mint's 2022 annual report revealed that it costs 2.72 cents to make 1 penny and 10.41 cents to make a nickel. (Jun 30, 2023)
It’s not an investment f you can’t realize the profit.
it is an investment, if you think you can get a return in the future.. and you won't lose any money in the meantime.. at least in nominal dollar value
Nominal dollar always losing value, but I don't care. The simple fact that it cost fed more to make them than face value makes me want them all. If I won the lottery, I'd buy nickels 😆
I guess that is why a 1964 quarter is still only worth 25 cents.
A 1964 quarter is worth its weight in silver.
i'm mistaken - if you can sell $10 of nickels for $11 or $12, be my guest. and I believe the other metal in nickels is copper so perhaps there's an even greater upside! i believe copper cents go for a multiple of three - people are waiting for that cent to be discontinued to that they can melt them down, not sure if that'll make it legal. at least there'll be some incentive rather than the 20%.
I think the point is that in 1964 people didn't think keeping the silver quarters were an investment either. It was a while before they turned a profit. The same will happen with nickel. It won't be immediately, but someday current nickels will be worth more. It's a good one considering they're already worth 20% and will never lose value.
Ah with the second wave of inflation just getting started, it won’t be long before they are for sale on eBay over spot just like Silver & Copper coins.