Why do Canadian nickels get little attention in the U.S.?

[Recyclersteve]

I'm just curious- why do you think that Canadian nickels get so little attention in the U.S.? Do people just not realize that the pre '82 nickels with some exceptions are worth more than face value? I've found five dealers who sell the Canadian nickels for between four and five U.S. Cents each. These were found in three different states, only one of which is a border state. These should easily be available for those of you who live in places like Michigan and New England. I like that the Canadian nickels are often 99 percent nickel as opposed to 25 percent for U.S. Nickels. The benefit here is that you can store more wealth in a much smaller space. I guess you could say that nickel being potentially toxic is a disadvantage.

This reminds me a bit like how easy it was to find silver half dollars for face value at banks 5-7 years ago.

Your thoughts?

[henrysmedford]

see-- http://realcent.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2451&hilit=+nickel

[Tourney64]

There was a guy named madeuce who went up to Canada years ago from the US and our forum and set up a large scale nickel operation and singlehandedly impacted the nickel percentages to extremely low numbers. He had a warehouse and several Brinks truck deliveries each week. He hired one guy, had a fork lift and had several large scale commercial sorters. He crated the nickel nickels up and shipped them to a company that needed nickel. He stopped operations when the price of nickel dropped and the percentages became too low for profitability. I still have some of the pictures from when he posted years ago.

[reddirtcoins]

Because I live so far south I can't find any.... I would love to have more. just not going to pay collector retail for 5 cent face value.

[Mercuryman]

There was a guy named madeuce who went up to Canada years ago from the US and our forum and set up a large scale nickel operation and singlehandedly impacted the nickel percentages to extremely low numbers. He had a warehouse and several Brinks truck deliveries each week. He hired one guy, had a fork lift and had several large scale commercial sorters. He crated the nickel nickels up and shipped them to a company that needed nickel. He stopped operations when the price of nickel dropped and the percentages became too low for profitability. I still have some of the pictures from when he posted years ago.

Are there any links to his old post's? I would love to see them.

[PennyPauper]

Why do Canadian nickels get little attention in the U.S.?
Most folks are still napping,don't see the inflation happining or want to see it.
Plus no knowledge of base metals and coinage.
Maybe just repulsed in general from change with dirty coins.

[mtalbot_ca]

Three words: shipping shipping shipping

So it means that there is not enough .999 nickels, available to the market (read US) so the demand cannot pick-up.

To me, the real question is why there is no interest in Canada for .999 nickels and the answer IMHO is lack of knowledge.

Cheers,

[ZenOps]

As of 2006 it was illegal to ship $100 worth of pennies or nickels from the US to Canada.

But lesser known is there is also technically is a legal limit on how much you can ship to the USA as a singular entity $10,000 CAD face or pretty much one exactly one short ton.

Commercially not feasable to ever be on the scale of the Crown, which is removing about 1,200 tons of nickel and 1,200 tons of cupronickel every year and is probably reselling it at markup to make Latvian and Lithuanian 1 and 2 Euros.

There were only 1.8 billion pure 5 cent nickels made in Canada. Trivia: How many copper pennies did the US make in 1944?

[68Camaro]

If it were only the crown removing at that rate it would take 750 years to pull them all. Presuming they could continue at that rate.

[nero12345]

Most of our nickel that we used to make our nickels came from Cuba and is another reason it could be "technically" illegal to ship to the US. I love the nickels especially now we lost our pennies.

[Morsecode]

I've found five dealers who sell the Canadian nickels for between four and five U.S. Cents each. These were found in Washington state, California, and even Arizona. These should easily be available for those of you who live in places like Michigan and New England.

I can assure you there are no dealers or coin shops anywhere in New England that I'm aware of that would even think to carry Canada nickels...not at .05 ea, not at .10 ea.

A $100 box of Jeffersons here in CT will generally yield 3 or 4 .999 nickels. They're just not that plentiful.

[68Camaro]

Most of our nickel that we used to make our nickels came from Cuba and is another reason it could be "technically" illegal to ship to the US. I love the nickels especially now we lost our pennies.

I hadn't actually looked up the nickel sources until your post; was surprised to see that Cuba was a supplier, and that Canada was a relatively smallish contributor to both suppliers and reserves. While the Sudbury meteoritic nickel is of high purity it isn't the major source of supply in the world. The tropical sources of supply, though low purity, are dominant.

[ZenOps]

1.8 billion five cent pure nickels = 9,000 tons. ARP has been removing more than 1,200 tons per year nickel (five cent, dimes, quarters) since 2003.

If they concentrated solely on five cent nickels, the pure nickel five cent could technically be gone by now.

Amount of silver in circulation coins in the US in 1964? 60,000 tons.

BTW: From my weak observation, they are concentrating on removing and replacing the quarters. It is near impossible to find a pre-1999 quarter, the percentages are even lower than finding a pre-82 nickel.

Also lesser known, all members of the euro were required to turn in their coinage and bills. Cupronickels and a rare few pure nickel coins would have survived that. Although many were made, you would be hard pressed to ever find a french 2 franc or nederlands coin on north american soil.

[Verbane]

There was a guy named madeuce who went up to Canada years ago from the US and our forum and set up a large scale nickel operation and singlehandedly impacted the nickel percentages to extremely low numbers. He had a warehouse and several Brinks truck deliveries each week. He hired one guy, had a fork lift and had several large scale commercial sorters. He crated the nickel nickels up and shipped them to a company that needed nickel. He stopped operations when the price of nickel dropped and the percentages became too low for profitability. I still have some of the pictures from when he posted years ago.

Are there any links to his old post's? I would love to see them.

See this link for Madeuce's operation:

http://www.realcent.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=10840&p=113226&hilit=madeuce#p113226

[68Camaro]

1.8 billion five cent pure nickels = 9,000 tons. ARP has been removing more than 1,200 tons per year nickel (five cent, dimes, quarters) since 2003.

If they concentrated solely on five cent nickels, the pure nickel five cent could technically be gone by now.

Amount of silver in circulation coins in the US in 1964? 60,000 tons.

BTW: From my weak observation, they are concentrating on removing and replacing the quarters. It is near impossible to find a pre-1999 quarter, the percentages are even lower than finding a pre-82 nickel.

Also lesser known, all members of the euro were required to turn in their coinage and bills. Cupronickels and a rare few pure nickel coins would have survived that. Although many were made, you would be hard pressed to ever find a french 2 franc or nederlands coin on north american soil.

I stand corrected; my mental math was off by a factor of 100.

1,800,000,000 nickels =
18,000,000 pounds =
9,000 tons = 7.5 years at 1200 tons/year

mtalbot is reporting still finding 5-7-ish% .999 nickels - actually not bad and I would be sorting myself if I was in Canada until it got down below ~3%.

Because of no ARP in the US, given the time delay in circulation I'm still finding about half of Cdn quarters and dimes here to be .999, which probably comes from people cleaning out change jars that go back years, though there just aren't that many period in FL relatively speaking. Morsecode gets a lot more in the NE.

[68Camaro]

I do find quite a few French francs (more than a handful) and a few dutch coins.

[mtalbot_ca]

1.8 billion five cent pure nickels = 9,000 tons. ARP has been removing more than 1,200 tons per year nickel (five cent, dimes, quarters) since 2003.

If they concentrated solely on five cent nickels, the pure nickel five cent could technically be gone by now.

Amount of silver in circulation coins in the US in 1964? 60,000 tons.

BTW: From my weak observation, they are concentrating on removing and replacing the quarters. It is near impossible to find a pre-1999 quarter, the percentages are even lower than finding a pre-82 nickel.

Also lesser known, all members of the euro were required to turn in their coinage and bills. Cupronickels and a rare few pure nickel coins would have survived that. Although many were made, you would be hard pressed to ever find a french 2 franc or nederlands coin on north american soil.

I stand corrected; my mental math was off by a factor of 100.

1,800,000,000 nickels =
18,000,000 pounds =
9,000 tons = 7.5 years at 1200 tons/year

mtalbot is reporting still finding 5-7-ish% .999 nickels - actually not bad and I would be sorting myself if I was in Canada until it got down below ~3%...

From another subject in this sub-forum: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=30614 we have estimated that the ARP has removed over 19% of nickels from circulation.

[SilverDragon72]

The Canadian Nickels get their due attention....from ME! I pick them up as often as I'm able to, especially since I can get them at FV.

Whatever my LCS has that particular day.....I never know what I'll find every time I go in there!

[SilverDragon72]

I'm just curious- why do you think that Canadian nickels get so little attention in the U.S.? Do people just not realize that the pre '82 nickels with some exceptions are worth about 9 cents each? I've found five dealers who sell the Canadian nickels for between four and five U.S. Cents each. These were found in Washington state, California, and even Arizona. These should easily be available for those of you who live in places like Michigan and New England. I like that the Canadian nickels are often 99 percent nickel as opposed to 25 percent for U.S. Nickels. The benefit here is that you can store more wealth in a much smaller space.

I will give runner-up status to French 1/2, 1, and 2 franc coins which can easily be found in many junk foreign boxes.

This reminds me a bit like how easy it was to find silver half dollars 5-7 years ago.

Your thoughts?

I used to collect the Francs when I found them, but often times a dealer will sell foreign stuff for 5/1.00, so I'm not sure it's worth it to get any of those.

[cooyon]

The Canadian Nickels get their due attention....from ME! I pick them up as often as I'm able to, especially since I can get them at FV.

Whatever my LCS has that particular day.....I never know what I'll find every time I go in there!

+1
I do the same and have almost 2 tubes of King George 5, a 1926 near 6 and several 1948s all at face value, plus a lot of uncirculated young queens. Recently, I have been getting a lot of older steel nickels, but some are high grades.

[Recyclersteve]

1.8 billion five cent pure nickels = 9,000 tons. ARP has been removing more than 1,200 tons per year nickel (five cent, dimes, quarters) since 2003.

If they concentrated solely on five cent nickels, the pure nickel five cent could technically be gone by now.

Amount of silver in circulation coins in the US in 1964? 60,000 tons.

BTW: From my weak observation, they are concentrating on removing and replacing the quarters. It is near impossible to find a pre-1999 quarter, the percentages are even lower than finding a pre-82 nickel.

Also lesser known, all members of the euro were required to turn in their coinage and bills. Cupronickels and a rare few pure nickel coins would have survived that. Although many were made, you would be hard pressed to ever find a french 2 franc or nederlands coin on north american soil.

I found about 8-10 French 2 francs, 175 or so 1 francs, and about 20-30 Dutch guilders just yesterday. Also 3 or so Netherlands Antilles coins. I did have to spend a couple hours of back braking time going through a mostly full 5 gallon painters bucket, but the coins were there.

[henrysmedford]

Got over $20 FV at a .8 of face today.

Untitled by henrysmedford, on Flickr
Untitled by henrysmedford, on Flickr

[Recyclersteve]

1.8 billion five cent pure nickels = 9,000 tons. ARP has been removing more than 1,200 tons per year nickel (five cent, dimes, quarters) since 2003.

If they concentrated solely on five cent nickels, the pure nickel five cent could technically be gone by now.

Amount of silver in circulation coins in the US in 1964? 60,000 tons.

BTW: From my weak observation, they are concentrating on removing and replacing the quarters. It is near impossible to find a pre-1999 quarter, the percentages are even lower than finding a pre-82 nickel.

Also lesser known, all members of the euro were required to turn in their coinage and bills. Cupronickels and a rare few pure nickel coins would have survived that. Although many were made, you would be hard pressed to ever find a french 2 franc or nederlands coin on north american soil.

I found about 8-10 French 2 francs, 175 or so 1 francs, and about 20-30 Dutch guilders just yesterday. Also 3 or so Netherlands Antilles coins. I did have to spend a couple hours of back braking time going through a mostly full 5 gallon painters bucket, but the coins were there.

Here we are 5 years later and I am still finding these. They are generally mixed in with other foreign coins, so it is a bit of a pain to go through all of them to find a few good coins.