Where Do All The Coins Go?

atleast if they are not readable metal scraps
and good ones I tend to keep or trade
i must try selling some :p

I think most of them end up here in my collection ^^

Not really, but there are just so many out there... there are jars full of old coins everywhere and whenever somebody dies there is an old tobacco tin with old coins which ends up on ebay.

The system in the UK has always been that when coins are removed you pay them in at the bank and they are melted. Even under this instruction a large percentage don't make it there.

I have to think that though I enjoy collecting 90% of my collection is never going to be worth anything. The older stuff, with lower mintages and made with real silver perhaps, the modern stuff is generally junk except for a few low mintage commemoratives. These commemoratives tend to be hoarded immediately on circulation though...

I think Conder is probably lowballing that figure significantly. I was a cashier for almost 4 years, and I would run out of quarters and cents (2 rolls each) almost *every day*. Unless the customer happened to have some spare change to round out the total, most transactions required 3-6 coins.

I do not struggle to imagine that the average American has probably $20-50 in spare change around their house. For every person that spends their change as they get it, there is another person who has an exorbitantly large change jar with $100-1,000 inside.

That is not even counting the massive quantities held in bank vaults and by cash logistics corporations in their warehouses.

People I was asking about coins out of circulation, not in circulation. But anyway, I have plenty of change in my house, 5 cents to $2 coins, usually about $50 - $100 worth. When I use to cash money for a business I worked at, 5 cents, $1 and $2 would be cashed and 10, 20 and 50 cents would be withdrawn. So where do the 10, 20 and 50 cents go. So pre- Euro coins, or the old Indian paisa, Laos 10, 20 and 50 att coins, where are they. I doubt they are all in collections, or retrieved by the banks.

I believe that one of the things that is causing older coins to appear in circulation is CoinStar. At least it *seems* like you see a lot of older coins in change since the machines started to appear...

Not long ago there was a post or maybe a few about all the things people do to and with coins. Aside from all the ones in people's jars, cans, boxes, etc., so many are melted down for just metal. However, a massive amount have things done to them like making items, throwing in rivers,lakes and oceans, placing on train tracks, making jewlery and on and on and on. Coins are used for so many things besides money, I sometimes wonder why there are any left at all.

Most governments have a coinage recycling programme, whereby worn and obsolete coins get redeemed and scrapped. For coins where the scrap metal value is still below face value, it does "cost money" for a government to do so - it's effectively buying back a $1 coin, say, and turning it into 18 cents worth of scrap metal. But most countries consider this "part of the service" which they are supposed to be providing their people.

Sometimes, economic events move too quickly for a government to react in withdrawing coins - sudden or chronic inflation causes the coins to become worth more as scrap metal than as money. In such cases, unofficial melting can account for a considerable fraction of the original population. Australian round 50 cents, Mexican bimetallic silver coins and Indian stainless steel rupees are just some examples of this occurring. Since such a situation will mean that government is now making a loss rather than a profit on every single one of those coins they make, they usually declare those coins to be obsolete, stop making them, and withdraw them promptly for scrapping.

These days, most recycled coinage metal does not end up back in the coin production facility to be turned into new coins. Instead, the coins are "waffled" (or otherwise distinctively defaced) and sold off as scrap metal.