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i stack them in their boxes, unopened. in any real currency emergency, Argentina comes to mind, coins disapear. Thats what i've read and been told time and time again.

the Mint has NO choice but to debase nickels, its only a matter of when. Nickel, imo, is going to $50, and someone above said 75/25's will be going to 10X face.

i'm leery of .999's coz its a foreign coin, and i dont want to have to explain to some other American i'm trading with, its metallic compostion.

the key is not to overextend yourself when stacking boxes. i'm sitting on about a $1000 of crappy post 65 debased quarters, debating whether to run them over to the bank, get the fiat, and buy rolls of unc 90% American coinage, or ASE's asap.

It has to make a lot of difference depending on your intent. I completely understand all the views; they make sense for that specific person/intent.

For me it's personal protection against a hyperinflation/SHTF scenario. It's important to diversify in as many of the PMs and BMs as you can, but how you balance things also depends on your relative resources. I started with silver, small, several years ago, worked up in amounts gradually. (And learned the drill on what to buy and how.) Then in 2010 I started buying as much silver (ASE and 90% junk) as my assets allowed, and then (because it's at a whole 'nuther level) started selling off bonds and bond funds to buy gold (AGE). Then I went back to silver during a price dip to catch that up to gold so that they were more balanced.

But by November I felt I had as much of both Ag and Au as I was comfortable with for the moment, and so started into both pennys and nickels. I started slow, collecting pocket change and raiding coffee funds at work, etc. Realized that wasn't going to touch the expected need, wasn't working fast enough, so started buying and sorting pennys (small-time, hand-sorting, for personal storage only), and buying bricks of nickels. Still accumulating both.

I don't have the extra money to spend in hoarding nickles. I do go through a few rolls from time to time to find 'pre-1962' nickles, war nickles and the very rare (for me) buffalo with a date.

Being a 'hand sorter' I don't do much, but the reason I chose 1961 and before is because the most 'common Harris album' for collecting coins goes from 1938 to 1961 (most common or the cheapest ... either one )

In any case, I found a few (very few!) war nickles and way fewer Buffalos. But I have noticed the price of 38-61 complete nickle sets definitely increasing on e-Bay the past couple years. Anyway, I average roughly about 1 'keeper' per roll of 40 nickles. Certainly not the way to build a large hoard, but fun to go through and look for my kind of 'keepers'.

Sheba

sheba,

i do the same as you, except i keep pre-1960. hopefully one day, I can have year specific rolls for each year from 1938-1960 or atleast have a few of the albums filled with those.

There is nothing wrong with hoarding nickels over pennies or vice versa. The problem is not doing anything at all.
Personally, I like anything of durable value vs FRN's. One can look at the trade off of acquiring, sorting, dumping CU coins vs CuNi coins, which require no effort of anything beyond acquiring. At this point the comparison is simple. Look at what the intrinsic value of 20% (my keeper yield) of a $100 in bank boxed pennies is worth vs the intrinsic value premium of the entire nickel box (including how many WN's on average are found)

So keeper rate of 20% x $100 face in pennies = $20 in keepers x 1.81 intrinsic value premium = $36.34 for $100 in unsorted coins from the bank.
$100 CuNi with 100% keeper rate, intrinsic premium of $30.94 and a bonus war nickel- $1.56, for a total intrinsic premium over face value = $32.50

Some might argue that a $3.84 reward for sorting pennies and all the time and other costs (fuel to drive to banks and acquire, fuel to dump) is hardly worth the effort for someone who just wants to hedge FRN's with coins.
( of course, not talking about the rare and unlikely 1909 S VDB proof numi penny that awaits daylight in that next roll to be sorted.

What I do is maintain approx 200 boxes of nickels to lock in an immediate hedge. There is no simpler risk free hedge than that IMVHO (Most people can't sort out 2,000,000 keepers from 10,000,000 coins over a weekend to convert out of FRN's). Next I'll sort through and dump the remains of 10-15 b boxes to free up some Cu sorting cash, finding war nickels and buffaloes as a bonus, then go acquire pennies with those funds and sort 'em in my "man cave", returning 80% of them for another fresh batch. Then I just sort enough additional nickels to free up funds sufficient to keep pace with the copper keepers and maintaining the penny sorting float.

This process keeps a hedge on FRN's at all times and allows one to either sort out and keep pennies, while hedging, or to just keep the nickel boxes tucked away with minimal effort to take a risk free hedge.

Jonflyfish: I hadn't planned to sort the nickel boxes I have been accumulating (currently only 13 boxes, small change compared to you). But if I did, what's your overall rough yield for the WNs and Buffaloes?

I have yet to buy any boxes to sort but I would like too. I don't just stack boxes but I do keep all nickels from my change and always offer my friends 5 zincs for theirs.

Aside form being a hedge, like others have said, keeping all your nickels(or any change) helps to save money with out even thinking about it. When I turned 18 I bought my first gun with nothing more than dimes and quarters I had been saving up(that was earlier this year).

68Camaro wrote:Jonflyfish: I hadn't planned to sort the nickel boxes I have been accumulating (currently only 13 boxes, small change compared to you). But if I did, what's your overall rough yield for the WNs and Buffaloes?

66Camero-
Sort a few from time to time and replenish to top off the stack. WN's am seeing on ave 1 per box. Sometimes none for a few and other times a handful per box. Buffaloes are slightly less at about 0.7/ box. These averages tend to be higher where fewer new coins are introduced into circulation. Hope that helps.

Shattered, love the post. . . I bought an AR15 a few years back w/ nothing but quarters and dimes I saved while delivering pizzas through college.

I agree copper pennies are the way to go over nickels. I bought one box just for kicks and stashed it under my bed, but personally wouldnt put a significant amount of money into nickels, especially for the reason that I think they will be in circulation for quite some time to come

Silver_Stampede wrote:I agree copper pennies are the way to go over nickels. I bought one box just for kicks and stashed it under my bed, but personally wouldnt put a significant amount of money into nickels, especially for the reason that I think they will be in circulation for quite some time to come

Nickels are an instant risk free hedge. Pennies require time to acquire, sort, then return zincolns, repeat until a specified quantity has been stored. As far as circulation goes, both pennies and nickels are obviously circulated. That can end in a heartbeat for any number of reasons. Since buying pennies is not risk free (can lose the premium over face paid), to maintain a risk free hedge, if pennies are the preferred choice, one might buy nickels to dispense of the FRN's, then sort and/or return some over time in exchange for pennies to sort, leaving only the zincolns floating in the pool as the risk. Otherwise, it will take some time to convert $20k into copper pennies for a risk free hedge, unless the Ryedale fairy comes and converts the FRN's into copper pennies while you sleep.