by ZenOps » Thu Dec 06, 2012 10:05 am
You can find copper coins almost everywhere in the world. Bronze being superior to Brass, the US made their last Bronze penny in 1962 and their last Brass penny in 1982. The British made their last Bronze penny in 1961 and last Brass penny in 1991. Canada made their last Bronze penny in 1996.
Again, US coins are 75% to 91.7% copper, which means they are *all* copper coins (slightly differing sizes of pennies, especially the presidential dollars - in my view) with just a nickel cladding.
If you go by Canada, we produced 1.9 Billion pure nickels, spread out to 31 million people that means $3 in pure nickels per person, probably half of that now that the final Alloy recovery program to recover nickel has been running for the last 8 years. If you actually look at the grams or ounces per person in coin form - by my estimation, it would be far easier to corner the nickel market than the Hunt Brothers or any modern equivalent cornering the silver market. There was far more circulating silver per capita back in 1964 than there ever was circulating nickel, even to this day.
By weight, there is at least 30x more copper coinage than nickel still circulating in the world, and 10x more for industrial. At a price that is only half that of nickel currently - it would be impossible to corner the copper market.
All it really takes is a few thousanc people like Kyle Bass, buying $1 million worth of nickels - and they are gone.
Beaver collector