The Genius Of Clad Coinage

Cupronickel clads have held up well. They are basically copper coins, as their copper content is 92 percent. Copper has worked well for coinage for centuries.

One main drawback with the clad coinage, and plated coinage generally, is the lack of recyclability. It's the Mint's job to withdraw damaged and other no-longer-legal-tender coinage and recoup the costs.

Take, say, a bronze coin and damage it so that it is no longer fit for purpose. The mint can take that damaged coin and toss it straight into the scrap bronze bin and melt it down to make new coins. Same for .900 silver, .900 gold and "nickel" cupronickel.

But a clad coin cannot be de-cladded. Melt down a clad coin and you get a lump of 92% copper, 8% nickel (or perhaps less nickel, if the coins were badly worn or the cladding layer was otherwise partially stripped away) which is useless for making either new copper coring or new cupronickel cladding.

Yes, it can be re-refined and re-purified back into useful metals, but not easily - and probably not by a mint-owned facility. Recycled clad coinage will never be turned back into coins again. The recycling loop is not "closed".

This has not so far been a major issue in America, where the economy has been stable enough that a mass recall and remelting of the coinage has not been necessary. Other countries that have used similar cladding technology to make their coins (such as Thailand) have not been so fortunate.

I would imagine it is a fairly simple process for those who know how to do it to melt the coins down and separate the metals. I am not by any means a metallurgist but would think they have different weights and properties which would allow the nickel and copper to be separated. Of course you would have to have large quantities to make it worthwhile. Otherwise just melt it into ingots and sell them to scrappers.

In that same vein, is there an alloy that would produce a uniform silver color and similar electrical, striking and wear properties these days to replace clad? I would imagine an alloy would be easier to produce than the clad sandwich and even if the metal cost is slightly higher might reduce the costs involved. I know they spent a boatload to decide that a slight difference in nickel to copper content would work on nickels, dimes and quarters but AFAIK it went nowhere.

All Interesting Points of View as far as I'm concerned. I cannot disagree with any of it!

N9jig,
We must be about the same age. In 1963 when I was five, my dad gave me a big jar full of coins, some Whitman folders, and told me to have at it. I was lucky because there were lots of dimes and quarters, including Mercs and almost slick SLQs in there.
I hate clad coins.
I hate the designated hitter.
I am a curmudgeon.

No one hated clad in 1965 more than I did.

It simply wrecked coin collecting through a market crash and two date freezes. It also caused all the coins I loved to start disappearing from circulation.

Only much later did I realize just how great the transition really was. I inherited my own universe of circulating coinage because no one else collected or cared.

Ginger Rapsus' "The US Clad Coinage" 1992 has what I believe is a comprehensive list of the various alloys that were tried. Inco and other companies probably produced other alloys but to my knowledge none were official.

Clad has proven exceedingly durable. Many of them are chewed up in circulation because now days they acquire most of their wear in collisions rather than rubbing around in pockets. They can be quite attractive with nice even wear if they were well made.

Gems for the early dates were very elusive in the year of issue so most Gems for pre-1982 quarters and dimes come from mint sets.

Very interesting. I rarely saw silver in circulation. The older collectors Took all the silver out of circulation before I started collecting so clad coins were It.