Is there less nickel then silver?

[ZenOps]

I just got to thinking. Copper, silver and Gold have all been mined on large scale for at least 3,000 years.

Nickel was only discovered as a seperate element in 1751, and only actively mined on large scale for the last 120 years or so.

Is it possible there is less above ground nickel than silver?

[Robarons]

Not a chance

Nickel is mined in TONS and silver is mined in OUNCES

Nickel is used is stainless steel (and other nickel products) and well most US coins today. There is likely more nickel used alone in Nickels, dimes, quarters,halves, dollars from 1965-2012 than existing silver

If not the worlds Cupro-Nickel Coins out strip silver, Canada used .999 nickel, every European country used cupronickel, asia did too

Not to mention all the stainless steel items from kitchen sinks to fridges!

[ZenOps]

According to the standard "abundance of elements in earths crust"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_ ... th's_crust

1.6 million tons of nickel was mined last year and 23 thousand tons of silver last year, putting silver at a rarity ratio of 68:1.

BUT

Nickel has really only been mined in the hundreds of thousands of ton to million ton range since about 1950 (primarily due to fears after WWII, where they greatly decreased silver mining, and put an extraordinary effort into ramping up nickel mining.)

As mentioned, copper silver and gold have been mined for thousands of years. Most of the early "easy" gold has already been mined, but silver has had fairly steady output over the last few thousand years ~ somewhere just below ten thousand tons per year for many centuries.

I would do a calculation, but I think they are much closer than one would suspect. If the Canadian dollar is any indicator, it became cost ineffective to use 23.3 grams to make a silver dollar in 1968, it became cost ineffective to make a 7 gram nickel dollar in 2012...

I mention it because they are talking about shutting down certain parts of Sudbury nickel mine (due to exhaustion) the one nickel mine in north america. The "rarity ratio" will do doubt change if real recoverable nickel should happen to drop because of mine exhaustions.

[Robarons]

One short ton is 29,166 Troy ounces (if used metric tons or any other ton the results would come out the same)

So last year Nickel production was 46665600000 Troy ounces (1.6 Million tons X 29,166)
Silver production was 670818000 Troy Ounces (23,000 tons x 29166)

So if my math is right one years Nickel production in 2012 equals 69 Years of Silver production (and thats silver production in 2012, you can assume mining of silver was less in prior years along with nickel)

Btw the tone isnt fighting or anything negative but a legit conversation so I would like everyone to debate and throw their 2 cents in

Also Canada may have discontinued their Nickel Dollar coin in 1986- but this could have been merely because the coin was too big or just needed a design change. Current prices put a 1986 Canadian dollar coin at .25 cents, so even at $20 pound nickel prices it puts a dollar coin at .50 cents, so seinorage was always there (just not as good)

Thats why they dropped .999 nickel from all their coinage. A .999 quarter had like 8 Cents of Nickel (16 cents at $20/pound) but never went above face value, but steel quarters for pennies looks better on paper

[ZenOps]

Yeah "reality" seems to be very off on what the given numbers are.

1986 was the last 15.62 gram pure nickel dollar we made, but we did "halve" the size to the loonie and put a bronze then brass coating on it. If 1986 was the last true nickel dollar and it was smaller than the last silver dollar made in 1968, just by supposition they have to be much closer in rarity then stated.

Seriously, silver has been hoarded for thousands of years, but we didn't even have the chance to hoard nickel until about this century (we didn't even know nickel existed until 1751) That I have an easier time finding silver dimes than pre-1950 Canadian nickels is my reality check.

[Robarons]

This is true that nickel is more recently discovered, but if you going to that route lets try Aluminum.

"Before the Hall-Héroult process was developed in the late 1880s, aluminium was exceedingly difficult to extract from its various ores. This made pure aluminium more valuable than gold.[49] Bars of aluminium were exhibited at the Exposition Universelle of 1855.[50] Napoleon III of France is reputed to have given a banquet where the most honoured guests were given aluminium utensils, while the others made do with gold"

"Aluminium was selected as the material to be used for the 100 ounce (2.8 kg) capstone of the Washington Monument in 1884, a time when one ounce (30 grams) cost the daily wage of a common worker on the project;[53] The capstone, which was set in place on December 6, 1884, in an elaborate dedication ceremony, was the largest single piece of aluminium cast at the time, when aluminium was as expensive as silver.[53]"

Aluminum wasnt commercially viable for any use, including hoarding, until 1886 until a process made it cheap enough to do so. Until then it had a precious metal status, something nickel never had. Aluminum is only 130 years old or so, but its supply far exceeds all metals besides iron, even with all other metal having such a large headstart. Yes Nickel is much more rarer than aluminum but its short time of being available does not contribute its rarity, like aluminum,Uranium, and other more recent minerals that could not be refined until modern technology.

Nickel is cumbersome to hoard taking up space, harder to prove what it is, and the reasons backing Nickel's price is that fact your can turn in into stainless steel flatware or industrial applications, so its an metal effected by Industrial use. Its just not a good store of value. Your correct that nickel is a 'new' metal, but the fact gold and silver have thousands of years of accepted value and use as money is attractive.

Platinum and Iridium are exceedingly more rare than gold yet have lower prices because their connection to industry and limited uses. Both new metals as well do not have a track history as 'money'

If you wanted to invest $25,000 in gold it would be 15.625 ounces, the same amount of money would be over 3,300 pounds.

Nickel cannot be rarer than silver. Could it be more desirable in terms of usage to silver? Maybe but nickel supply seems stable enough, you should probe the $20/lb run up, this my friend might prove your case of rarity to silver.

[ZenOps]

Good points, thanks for the history on aluminum. Nickel does have some traits that make it better as money than either gold or silver. Gold coins are notoriously soft and do not circulate well at all, they are less durable than even paper bills. Silver tarnishes.

The big drawback to nickel is that some people are allergic to it and it is not anti-microbial like copper or silver (the act of tarnishing is in itself a bacteria killer) Pure nickel is magnetic and can be awfully hard to determine it from a lump of iron other than its density. Although I can imagine that if it became precious, someone would be able to figure out a quick chemical test to determine purity.

Guesstimate: At the very least, I figure that above ground nickel has to be 30x rarer than copper - given the copper 3 millenia headstart on mining. Putting silver at around 20x rarer than nickel. Purely by actual mined rarity, if copper and gold are priced in $ where they "should be", nickel should be at least $60/pound and silver $160/ounce.

The only reason that we have any reasonable source of nickel is because of the ancient metorite strike that hit Sudbury, stirring up the core and spewing it onto the open ground. There technically is very little nickel at the surface lithosphere due to its magnetic properties (It tended to sink and get magnetically attracted to the very deep core of the earth, like neodymium and also heavy elements like gold which also tended to sink) Once Sudbury dries up, its not likely one will find another deposit of nickel without finding another ancient meteorite impact, perhaps making nickel much rarer in the future as it does not naturally appear in the lithosphere.

Silver and copper *should* be able to maintain steady output in the upcoming decades and centuries, but gold and nickel are destined to become increasingly rare as one must go deeper and deeper as neither are lithosphere natural. If I were trying to maintain a multi-generational empire, it would be with gold and nickel coins as it will without doubt become rarer and rarer (unless we can mine the core of the earth directly)

Like aluminum, Titanium is another metal that is destined to become extremely cheap once someone figures out a way to extract it efficiently.

Tin is massively underpriced by rarity, even compared to nickel.

[penny pretty]

besides being shiny, silver has another asset!

[ZenOps]

Most metals are conductive. Tin is superconductive. Would some companies give up 15% electrical efficiency to use copper? Depending on product, absolutely.

Is it possible to replace 500 ounces of silver in a Tomahawk cruise missle with 575 ounces of copper, I'd wager to say absolutely - But you will get less physical mileage out of it due to weight of both the copper and the extra battery power to run it. The question sometimes becomes, would you rather have one silver Tomahawk, or 10 copper Tomahawks with 20% less range for the same price. Or in the case of a cellphone maker, sacrifice 5% battery life to use copper instead of silver? Depending on product again, yes.

Its like saying Nickel makes the most durable batteries (which is true), but all metals can be made into batteries, even explosive metals like lithium.

[penny pretty]

Most metals are conductive. Tin is superconductive. Would some companies give up 15% electrical efficiency to use copper? Depending on product, absolutely.

Is it possible to replace 500 ounces of silver in a Tomahawk cruise missle with 575 ounces of copper, I'd wager to say absolutely - But you will get less physical mileage out of it due to weight of both the copper and the extra battery power to run it. The question sometimes becomes, would you rather have one silver Tomahawk, or 10 copper Tomahawks with 20% less range for the same price. Or in the case of a cellphone maker, sacrifice 5% battery life to use copper instead of silver? Depending on product again, yes.

Its like saying Nickel makes the most durable batteries (which is true), but all metals can be made into batteries, even explosive metals like lithium.

aww ya blinded me with SCIENCE!

[SilverDragon72]

Most metals are conductive. Tin is superconductive. Would some companies give up 15% electrical efficiency to use copper? Depending on product, absolutely.

Is it possible to replace 500 ounces of silver in a Tomahawk cruise missle with 575 ounces of copper, I'd wager to say absolutely - But you will get less physical mileage out of it due to weight of both the copper and the extra battery power to run it. The question sometimes becomes, would you rather have one silver Tomahawk, or 10 copper Tomahawks with 20% less range for the same price. Or in the case of a cellphone maker, sacrifice 5% battery life to use copper instead of silver? Depending on product again, yes.

Its like saying Nickel makes the most durable batteries (which is true), but all metals can be made into batteries, even explosive metals like lithium.

aww ya blinded me with SCIENCE!

500 ounces of silver in a Tomahawk?? What a waste of shiny that would be. Do they make missiles with that much silver in it? I have no idea.