Rebasement Or Discontinuation Of US Pennies And Nickels

Plenty have been melted before the copper ban. Just follow whats going on with canada, their government actually culls the copper pennies, and redistrubutes the steels, and same with the nickels, and silver. Canada is going to be pulling all their "pennies" soon.

WHEN our fed changes the nickel composition, or discontinues there I still Plenty of time to buy all the "nickel" nickels you can afford before another composition coin gets mixed in.

While "rebasement" - unilaterally declaring coins of face value X to now be face value 2X or 5X or 100X - is technically possible, it's an option very few countries pursue these days, simply because there's no control over the process unless the government already holds the vast majority of the rebased coins in its vaults.

The only example I can recall of a country that opted for universal coinage rebasement from the 20th century was Suriname. Prior to 2004, there were in theory 100 cents to the guilder in Suriname. But inflation had rendered the guilder nearly worthless, and coins of any denomination had not actually been seen in circulation for over a decade. In 2004, the guilder was replaced by the Surinamese dollar at a rate of 1000:1.

But, in order to reduce the cost of issuing new coinage, the old guilder-based coinage was re-issued at full face value on the new dollar - a handy 1000-fold profit for anyone who happened to have a stash of the old coins sitting about. Presumably the government wouldn't have done this if they (or the banks) didn't have most of the coins accounted for; Suriname has a small economy and doing so wouldn't have been that hard.

I can't see rebasement happening in the US at all; the economy's just too big, with too many coins floating around out there.

Now this is an interesting topic. Not to get into political talk but it's clear that the current administration and Federal Reserve would never purposely do anything that would encourage talk of inflation or deflation in this country, so I don't see rebasement happening in the next 4 years. BUT, the fact that it's even mentioned by the WSJ and coming out of the mouth of Chicago Fed Chief Economist tells me it's something to keep in mind. I don't think we should just dismiss the possibility, regardless of whether you think it's good or bad idea.

OO

Taking it down a notch from a theoretical economic consideration to a simplified, practical, physical hoarding consideration...

If somebody was going to do the metal hoarding thing and fill their 55 gallon drums in the basement with either copper pennies or nickels,
which would be the more desirable/profitable to hoard---copper pennies or nickels?

So...... you think they are going to try it then?

The speculator mentioned in the editorial has a $1 million position in nickels. This may be the cheapest way to bet on the value of copper coinage because of the labor involved in sorting out the pre-82 pennies. In other words, if the speculator could get his/her hands on one-hundred million pre-82 pennies at $0.01 a piece (a $1 million investment), he/she may have gone with that position instead.

As collectors, we are not going to think of the time we spend roll searching as a cost. At least I don't consider it that way or this would be a very expensive hobby.