Just caught the Ni bug.

[Rastatodd]

I was going through the CurrencyDebasment,com and found that nickel is at $6 plus a pound. So that got me thinking about stacking Canadian Nickels as good way to diversify my stackage. I live here in Minnesota not to far from the Canadian border and I know the banks here local seem to have loose coins sitting in their coin trays so I going start a new venture one that takes up space in my home and that will drive my wife insane. "Sorry Honey, I promise I'll straighten up my area tomorrow." Wish me luck!

[mtalbot_ca]

Happy hunting!

Cheers,

[henrysmedford]

I think it can only go up----

[JerrySpringer]

Set aside the 0.999 Ni Canadian nickels w/o thinking twice about it. I live in a border state and find them on occasion through nickel bags or the random box find(s), but nothing extraordinary for a common-like coin that is used easily in place of the Jefferson nickel here. I think I have close to 10 pounds of Canadian nickels, which is about $60 face value. Nothing significant there, but years down the road they will be collectible and might go for what common wheat cents go for routinely.

[mtalbot_ca]

It is becoming more and more difficult to find them in the wild. From an average of over 14%, 30 months ago, I now stand at 8.7%. The original nickel block of 1.8 billion nickels produced is being diluted by roughly 200 millions steel ones every year, God only knows how many are being melted by the Alloy Recovery Program and finally some are saved-hoarded by us.

I figured another 1-2 years, and the percentage will be below 5%.

[Morsecode]

So, is that what they do...the ARP...they extract from circulation and melt them immediately? They're not sitting around in Crown warehouses waiting for spot nickel to rise. Correct?

Interesting then when you consider what that means for the potential future value of the small number of nickels beyond gov't reach.

[scyther]

So, is that what they do...the ARP...they extract from circulation and melt them immediately? They're not sitting around in Crown warehouses waiting for spot nickel to rise. Correct?

Interesting then when you consider what that means for the potential future value of the small number of nickels beyond gov't reach.

At least some of the time, they seem to be melting them. The mint has published statistics about how much money it's made from recycling old coins, and how many tons of metal extracted. But I have a feeling they don't really melt all the non-steel coins they get their hands on. It seems like after all these years, Ni percentages would be a lot lower if they did.

Still, since they are melting some of them, I keep all the Canadian CuNi (and obviously Ni) nickels I get. Can't hurt.

[mtalbot_ca]

Actually, eventhough in Canada we no longer have any NI (or CuNi) circulating coins produced, I believe the Mint is recycling some of the nickel in the production of coins for other agencies and government.

[ZenOps]

I heard its mostly going over to Europe for the €1 and €2.

Thats was assuming that there were to be more nations entering into the EU, like Ukraine. But thats kind of messed up now. They also needed more 2% nickel coins for the Philippines, and more for India as well (shortages in both places, but arguably there will never be enough nickel even at 2% to fulfill a billion person demand)

http://www.menafn.com/1093739529/Euro-c ... zone-entry

"Each set sells for 10 lats and contains 14.23 euros (19.57) in coins. Many bought the maximum five packs permitted per person." Latvia is in.

Yup, looks like about 9% for nickel nickels for me year, and a lot more skunk boxes as well. They are going fast.

[mtalbot_ca]

Yup, looks like about 9% for nickel nickels for me year, and a lot more skunk boxes as well. They are going fast.

I never got a complete skunk box.... the worst was like 2%.

[ZenOps]

Skunk boxes are easy to weed out. Just weigh it with a scale accurate to at least .1 pound.

I don't bother, most of the time you can just see if they are machine rolled wraps, all all year 2000 or later queen heads and just know...

I do have a scale accurate to 0.01 grams, they are cheap nowadays. If an individual roll is 160 grams or less, there is no need to even unwrap it.

[mtalbot_ca]

Good advice with the scale.

I get all my boxes from a credit union. Overall I might have gotten less than 10 rolls which were machine rolled.