Cost Of A Nickel Is Surging

Nickels are minted in quantity every year because this is how many are needed to make change.

Almost every year the economy grows a little so a few more coins are needed.

I sort of get that, but not really. The economy grows, and both virtual and real tokens for it (dollars or bytes in banking systems) are generated, but a dollar is always 20 nickels. The price of things is going to generate 1 nickel in change for some even dollar amount usually, for the 15% or whatever of people that pay in cash. The average joes spend them here and there or roll them up to the bank where they cycle through to business and change again. Most of them are in some kind of endless loop from bank to business to people and back again, a few are lost or stowed in a kiddy bank or dropped in the river etc, but I didn't say stop making them, I said make less (of all the coins). I think we would be fine minting 10-25% of what we do today in metal.

Such conversations are meaningless. Soon enough plastic cards will replace all currencies everywhere.

Great article. Thanks for posting.

Easy to see why - I can't find new CDs very often. I'm the old fogey type - I like my money and music in a tangible, storable form rather than a file floating around in cyberspace.