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 Replies: 24 / Views: 1,072 |
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New Member
United States
40 Posts |
I have a simple question that has stumped me for some time. Lets take the US Jefferson nickel. Since 1938 there has been about 40 to 45 Billion coins produced. Other than the few years of the war time alloy {1942 to 1945} the coin has been a stable composition, not counting design changes. So where are they all? Do they just disappear? Some do and some are collected and horded, I understand that, but 40 to 45 billion coins are alot of coins. |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
19108 Posts |
Where are they? Well, I have at least 800+ of them--housed in many tubes, and vintage and 'modern' Dansco albums. I could swing by the banks I acquire rolls from today and come home with three or four sealed boxes and handfuls of individual rolls. And I'm just one collector.
Looking more broadly, there are likely a few million residing at the bottom of fountains and other 'ornamental' water features across the nation. Millions more lost in soil and dirt. And many millions more biding their time in teller and cashier tills. Wonder how many are spending time at commercial coin service providers like Garda and Loomis--just to name two.
Interesting question!
Edited by ijn1944
02/18/2026 12:29 pm
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New Member
 United States
40 Posts |
I understand and agree with you ijn1944. But I just used the Jefferson nickel in my question. We also have small cents, dimes and quarters out there. That is alot of coinage floating out there somewhere. |
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Moderator
 United States
187446 Posts |
Quote:
We also have small cents That one is easier to answer. Zincoln's Curse.   |
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Moderator
Australia
16805 Posts |
Many of these missing coins are not truly "lost" in the sense of "can never be found again". There are probably hoards of them in people's houses and yards, but there's also plenty that have simply been dropped on the ground and are waiting to be picked up (or dug up) again. Others have been lost down sewers, overboard boats, or otherwise buried deep some place where their extraction is going to be somewhat more problematic, but still theoretically possible.
Coin collectors exist, of course, and they're going to assimilate some of those missing coins. They say 10% of the US population are coin collectors of one sort or another. Even if only 2% of those "coin collectors" are actively collecting nickels from change, that's still hundreds of thousands of people sucking one nickel of every date and mintmark out of circulation.
Tourists and emigrants are also going to account for some losses. I know that besides my own US nickel date collection, I have several baggies of US nickels sitting around my house here in Australia, and I'm not going to go to the trouble and expense of repatriating them back to America, and nobody else I might sell these coins to here in Australia is going to repatriate them either. They're stuck here, and are likely to end up either in people's collections or get sold off to a scrap metal merchant, who isn't subject to US laws against melting nickels.
Finally, a large chunk - perhaps even the majority - of the "lost" coins have been destroyed. Fire and accident take care of some, but many others are simply worn down or damaged to an extent that they no longer qualify as legal tender. In the past, such coins would be removed through the banking and Federal Reserve system and returned to the Mint for recycling. Nowadays, most of the bulk coin processing has been outsourced to Coinstar and the like, with reject and damaged coins simply going to landfill via the Coinstar's trash chute.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Moderator
United States
94636 Posts |
tons could be held in bank vaults and the Federal treasury in giant bags.
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Moderator
Australia
16805 Posts |
If the federal treasury had a large stockpile of them, then they wouldn't put orders for as many new coins in with the Mint. Some quantity of them will always be in transit at any given moment, either directly from the Mint or getting shipped from places that accumulate too many nickels, to places that don't have enough. But they don't need a strategic reserve of nickels. The huge annual mintages mean that the government believes that about that many coins are disappearing from circulation every year and need to be replaced.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Valued Member
United States
452 Posts |
I've got at least 3,500 Nickels. 1,600 of them are in an unopened shipping carton from the US Mint, consisting of 20 2-roll sets of 2005 Bison Nickels. I know my little hoard is less than a pimple on a gnat's behind when compared to the billions cranked out by the mint.
But there are lots of people hoarding far more than I am, just for their metal content, in the same way as people hoard 95% Cu Cents.
All of that hoarding probably constitutes a not insignificant part of "Where are all of the coins?"
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Moderator
United States
15381 Posts |
This is an appropriate thread for me to introduce the newer members to my data intensive reporting on Jefferson nickel circulation obsolescence that I reported on during my active CRH days. You can catch up on the topic here - and learn some fun facts about the actual percentages of 'missing coins' as @tomd asks about: http://www.coincommunity.com/forum/...PIC_ID=58454Take a look at my other hobby ... http://www.jk-dk.art |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2270 Posts |
Quote:
Many of these missing coins are not truly "lost" in the sense of "can never be found again". There are probably hoards of them in people's houses and yards, but there's also plenty that have simply been dropped on the ground and are waiting to be picked up (or dug up) again. Others have been lost down sewers, overboard boats, or otherwise buried deep some place where their extraction is going to be somewhat more problematic, but still theoretically possible.
Coin collectors exist, of course, and they're going to assimilate some of those missing coins. They say 10% of the US population are coin collectors of one sort or another. Even if only 2% of those "coin collectors" are actively collecting nickels from change, that's still hundreds of thousands of people sucking one nickel of every date and mintmark out of circulation.
Tourists and emigrants are also going to account for some losses. I know that besides my own US nickel date collection, I have several baggies of US nickels sitting around my house here in Australia, and I'm not going to go to the trouble and expense of repatriating them back to America, and nobody else I might sell these coins to here in Australia is going to repatriate them either. They're stuck here, and are likely to end up either in people's collections or get sold off to a scrap metal merchant, who isn't subject to US laws against melting nickels.
Finally, a large chunk - perhaps even the majority - of the "lost" coins have been destroyed. Fire and accident take care of some, but many others are simply worn down or damaged to an extent that they no longer qualify as legal tender. In the past, such coins would be removed through the banking and Federal Reserve system and returned to the Mint for recycling. Nowadays, most of the bulk coin processing has been outsourced to Coinstar and the like, with reject and damaged coins simply going to landfill via the Coinstar's trash chute. That's the right idea. The problem with these questions is that once collectors get involved everything changes. When movement of each individual coin is random then nice straight calculations hold but collectors change everything. I think of groups of coins having attrition rates. Circulating coins have a different attrition rate than those that have been set aside for any reason but all coins diminish in number. Collectors in Australia don't have so many bags of V-nickels because most of these are gone now. It is this variation in attrition and the nature of collectors that has created a world where it's far easier to find an XF 1940 nickel in circulation than it is to find a comparable mintage 1971; a world where sock drawers and rolls are crammed with 1940 nickels but you can't buy a 1971 in XF because attrition has eaten virtually every single one of them. Attrition on circulating coinage is very very high but attrition on 1913 V nickels is not. People have been hoarding nickels since the LME defaulted in 2008 but this doesn't affect the number of XF 1971 nickels in existence because there were none then either. Baggies of coins have very high attrition as well because they end up in poundage and most poundage ends up as play money for children or worse. It gets very complicated to use math once collectors get involved. Time don't fly, it bounds and leaps.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
19108 Posts |
Too, the geographic distribution of coins--in this case nickels--is not 'even' across the nation. I suspect there are fewer nickels located in the southeastern quarter of Montana than in the greater New York City metro area. Would be fun to see a map of coin distribution--of course, that's about impossible, but still is cool to imagine.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2200 Posts |
This is a great question! It really makes one think.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
19108 Posts |
Here we go... A total of 67.2+ billion Jefferson nickels have been minted (1938-2023) per wikipedia. This figure includes proofs. The total land area (minus water) of the US is 3.53 million square miles per wikipedia. Doing 'straight math', that would give us a figure of approx. 19 nickels per square mile. Think of a square mile in rural north central Nebraska (Wood Lake) vs. a square mile centered on metro Indianapolis. Not much drama here--there will be more nickels per square mile where population density is greater and industrial/commercial/financial activity is concentrated. Now, about all those nickels that went down in shipwrecks, ended up in overseas bazaars, etc., etc..... |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3169 Posts |
Billions of coins go to US territories and Dependencies and many countries South America.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
19930 Posts |
One word: ATTRITION
Lincoln Cent Lover!VERDI-CARE™ INVENTOR https://verdi.care/
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New Member
United States
40 Posts |
nickelsearcher I went to your post and that was good insight on the topic. I had to do some business at the bank and I had a $5.00 bill so I exchanged it for 2 rolls of nickels and 2 rolls of pennies. In those 2 rolls of nickels I had 1 War Nickel in it. So you are right they are still out there. This thread was just a question I had, since in my collecting I was writing down the mintages of the coin and it at first seamed like there are so many coins produced, where are they? But when you look at the response to that question it is understandable why we still each year produce so many more coins. So the answer is' To keep coin collecters happy. only kidding |
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Replies: 24 / Views: 1,072 |
Posted 02/18/2026 1:24 pm
