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I knew there was some .999 nickel canadian nickels out there so when a 1979 nickel came in the shop today I grabbed it up for 10c us. Now I tried throwing a magnet on it and it picks it up, but the canadian mint says 1979 should be .999 am I reading this wrong or what?

Thanks in advance.

Its cool, nickel is magnetic.

really? was not aware of that lol Thanks.

coppertone wrote:Its cool, nickel is magnetic.

He's right. Its actually the best way to tell the 1968 50% Canadian silver quarters apart from those made of nickel.

Be sure to buy French 1 Franc coins if you see them in the 10cent bin at the coin store. The are .999 Ni and worth about 14 or 15 cents.

The magnetic properties of nickel and steel make it Uber easy to separate both the worthless steel sandwiches and the more valuable Ni from your CuNi nickels. The magnet catches everything that the Ryedale misses

yah I don't live in Canada though, so mass sorting Canadian coin isn't in my future at least nearterm.

mflugher wrote:yah I don't live in Canada though, so mass sorting Canadian coin isn't in my future at least nearterm.

I think his point was to sort U.S. nickel, not Canadian. In Canada it doesn't work well to sort nickel with a magnet, too much steel.

Since the U.S. 5 cents in Cupro-Nickel isn't magnetic you can trow a magnet into a pile of U.S. nickel and extract easily both CA .999 nickels and Canadian steels.
You can buy full box of nickels to hoard as his and with a magnet spot the few roll that may contain .999 Ca Ni.

With the ARP it does not make sense to sort anything but pennies in Canada. Unfortunately!

thanks for correcting me, now I see how I can use this to my advantage ... thanks.

I still sort nickels here in Canada. Im still finding 10% - 12% .999 Ni

Thats good enough for me

frugalcanuck wrote:I still sort nickels here in Canada. Im still finding 10% - 12% .999 Ni

Thats good enough for me

Same here.

balz wrote:With the ARP it does not make sense to sort anything but pennies in Canada. Unfortunately!

For me it's the opposite, sorting nickel make a lot more sense than sorting penny, penny in Canada are worthless if you can't sell them due to shipping cost.

balz wrote:With the ARP it does not make sense to sort anything but pennies in Canada. Unfortunately!

Sorry to be ignorant, but what is ARP?

Alloy Recovery Program - The Canadian Govt is actively sorting and keeping the good stuff.

didou wrote:I think his point was to sort U.S. nickel, not Canadian. In Canada it doesn't work well to sort nickel with a magnet, too much steel.

Actually, I get at minimum $500.00 of Canadian nickels every month. At least $450.00 is Ni, but there is also steel, but also the Cupro-nickel, just like the USA nickels are made of. Every time I buy a bag, the 1st thing I do is run a magnet over it all to immediatelly seperate the Cupro-nickel from "everything else". Then, I hand sort the rest.

I hand sort Nickels so I use a magnet for my "first stage"of sorting.

I look through the non-magnetics and throw the CDN Cu/Ni into a separate bin than the US
nickels. Also check for US war nickels at this stage (never found one yet).

Then the magnetic pile I sort into 999 and steel, also anything really old I separate into my
"collection" rather than my "hoard". Found a few from the 20s and 30s this way, also once
found a 1951 commemorative. Also put the bunny Nickels (1967) aside for a friend that likes
them.

I think I'm getting about 12.5% Ni right now, though it's been a while since I kept exact count.
Last easter I did a "big sort" that I kept count on, got 16.79% Ni on that batch. Was getting
about 20% back in 2008.