Guess The New Coin Compositions

We all know this will never happen.

I think plated steel is likely, given its use in other countries, though a lot of vending machines with magnets will have to be updated if they go that way with the nickel (not to mention coin counters at the bank which all reject steel cents). In the past the US has been almost strangely sensitive to the needs of vending machines. Was it really necessary to make the Sacagawea brass buck compatible with the agony dollar given the rarity of that coin in actual circulation?

I don't know what else is cheap enough. Maybe aluminum? The weight and durability of aluminum seems to make it more problematic than steel.

Eliminating small coins seems to make more sense to me.

For reference, here is the 1973 report produced by the Treasury on the subject.

I'm with jbuck, get rid of the pocket lint.

I think we will probably see copper plated steel for the cent (Although copper plated aluminum would probably make more sense because it would make more cents (You can make more than twice as many cents from a pound of aluminum than you can from a pound of steel.) Weight and durability aren't really a big concern because the cent doesn't really circulate anyway and no vending machines accept them.

The five cent is the tougher challenge. Nickel plated steel would be fine for person to person commerce, but every single vending machine in the country would either need reprogramming or a new coin mechanism. And just about anything else you try is going to have the same problem. If you keep the size the same just about anything you use is going to be much lighter in weight because copper and nickel have fairly high densities. You could compensate for that by including something in the alloy that has a higher density, but most of those metals are high value. About the only cheap one is Lead. And you can imagine how that would go over, making coins from a nickel plated lead alloy. It would get shot down on two fronts. One is just the idea for plated lead for our coins, and the second is the outcry over how this would "expose our children to lead" and "introduce lead into the environment" from lost coins. Neither is really a serious concern but it would make a lead containing alloy a non-starter.

There is the possibility you might try making a nickel plated coin slightly thicker to correct for the weight loss but I'm not sure how much thicker a nickel could be before the machines start rejecting it for that reason. And you still have the magnetic problem. Most if not all of today's machines would reject a magnetic piece as a slug. So you either have to use a nonmagnetic alloy, or you are back to changing all the machines again. ?You could use a nonmagnetic stainless steel alloy, but most of those use a fairly high nickel content which brings you back to where you started.

I don't really see a way to change the nickel, other than discontinuing it, without having to change all the vending machines in the country.

Ha! We cannot even "copy what Canada does" when it comes to the one dollar and two dollar coins.

A worthy analysis with the right conclusion.

Cent = copper clad aluminum
Nickel = aluminum

Unless they are willing to go with an even lower relief coin than we have now then it would be
Cent = copper plated steel
Nickel = chrome plated steel (industrial hard chrome) as nickel plating steel requires you to copper plate it first then nickel plate it and I don't see them plating it twice

That's my six cents.....ha