Still No Recommendations For Alloy Changes For Circulating US Coins

Very interesting article.

Is it just me, or does nickel-plated copper-plated zinc sound like crazy talk?

Thanks for posting!

Why not have injection molded plastic coins?
After all, plastic banknotes are becoming increasingly common around the World.

Our cards are plastic, and almost everybody prefers them to paper notes and metallic coins.

I wonder what a collectors' proof plastic coin would look like?
THAT would certainly cut down the cost of collecting NCLT.
All sorts of pretty colors too!

In the case of the cent, why bother looking when the manufacturing cost, not including materials, is greater than the face value. They need to find an alloy that has a negative cost. One where the supplier PAYS the mint to take it off their hands.

The problem with doing what Canada does is that Canada used nickel plated steel which is magnetic and we don't want the vending machine industry to have to modify their machines. (Face it people, they are going to have to modify them.)

Of the five alloys they studied for the nickel the only on that is practical is the 80/20 copper nickel alloy and that won't significantly reduce the cost. Might get it below face value but only down to maybe 4.95 cents. A couple years and we would have to start all over again.

The copper. nickel. manganese, and zinc could reduce the cost by reducing the amount of nickel, and keep the electrical properties, but the weight would drop and probably cause vending machine rejection.

The copper/nickel/zinc is german silver. Looks good, is durable but once again the weight drops.

The R52 Stainless is silly. Chromium is considerably more expensive the nickel. If it is an "austenitic steel" and say has 20% Chromium in it, a 5 grams coin with 1 gram of chromium would cost around 32 cents (Googling chromium prices seem to show it as around $9 and ounce.)

NI plated Cu plated zinc they have rejected because damage could expose the zinc resulting in corrosion problems. O better choice would just be nickel plated copper. Weight would work, electrical properties would be similar and the cost would be less than face, but not by much. Same problem as the 80/20 alloy.

So far they have spent six years and who knows how much money trying to find replacement alloys with impossible requirements. Really how long should it take you to realize that NO alloy is going to result in a coin that cost less than one cent when the manufacturing cost is MORE than one cent.

Nothing can save the cent. Nothing. As Conder101 pointed out, non-material costs are already more than a cent. There is no solution, unless they can get paid to use some sort of toxic waste (which might arguably be safer than zinc ).

We should probably cut our losses and get rid of the nickel, although that would create problems for the quarter.

Where is it all going?

I'm sure everyone has seen the ash trays by the cash registers about everywhere you go containing cents that are available for "free" to round-off your purchase.
Well, the other day I ran into one that had dimes!

Hurry up, World!

Yeah, the quarter and dime would not make a good team. It could be done, but it would be confusing. Honestly, I hope I'm wrong, but I feel like the penny will be kicked down the street for another 10ish years, at which time the nickel will be made cheaper and the cent will be dropped. The nickel will then be around for at least 35 more years before it gets dropped.

You know, in the age of team sponsors and venue naming rights, I am really surprised that this has not happened yet.


Sounds good to me.


Sadly, we will probably be completely cashless before anything is done.