(I'm sure this has been discussed over the years, but I don't see any recent threads. Sorry if I missed it...)
Is anyone hoarding Canadian cents or nickels (copper or otherwise)?
I'm in the US and I worked in a retail cash office for many years. I always pulled the foreign coins from the drawers. I ended up with a nice haul of CAD coins (plus Barbados, Bahamas, etc.) that customers used in our American stores.
So now I have 3,036 Canadian coins (loved counting them all), and I wonder whether there's any numismatic reason to sort and save the copper or nickel coins?
I'm not talking about melt value (which is about nil), but I wonder whether anyone is now hoarding bags of cents or nickels like we do with LWCs in the states? Obviously I picked out all the silver!
I was about ready to dump my small hoard at a Coinstar on my next trip up north (as I mentioned in another thread), but then I read that the copper and nickel coins are being sorted out and melted for scrap.
So, should I sort out the older copper and nickel coins and bag them for the future?
I don't know what years you are talking about but for myself if they were mine, I would go through them looking for varieties first before I did anything with them.
Canadian coins have some nice varieties in 1 cent and 5 cent coins in the 50' and 60's and a few that will demand a nice rewards if you happen to find any.
I'm not real sure on melt value as its against Canadian law to melt our currency as Canadians I don't know about someone who lives in another Country.
I have had some luck selling Canadian small cents on ebay at face value, $50CAD bag of pre-1997 for $50USD with buyer paying the postage. Works out better than transporting them and paying Coinstar 12%.
@papeldog - In US we can melt Canada but not US (legally). I think in Canada you can melt US but not Canada. At least that's what the the guy buying all the melt stuff claims.
Certainly a lot of people are hoarding them, including me I am ashamed to admit, which is why they will probably never be worth more than face value. Sort them for varieties and for copper/ nickel only if you like doing that. I have actually stopped hoarding because of the size of the pile I have now.
technically only the mint can legally melt the coins,
doesn't stop you from hoarding on the chance they demonetize them (then it's ok to scrap), or unless you find an unscrupulous scrap dealer.
but consider it takes about 140 pennies ($1.40) to get $2 in scrap. in order to make any real profit you would have to save on a large scale... but collecting, storing, & then moving 1 ton of pennies in order to make $600 doesn't sound like a lot of fun.
keep the ones you like, coin star the rest and move on to something else
Follow-up: I found a video on youtube that shows a guy dumping his Canadian pennies in a US Coinstar machine. He dumped 70 Canadian pennies and received a voucher for 61 US cents (70 cents les the 11.9% fee). It was an interesting demonstration. I've never tried this, but here's the video:
Well as for me, I hoard all pure copper Canadian pennies, all US pennies (saving for a trip down south) all pure nickel Canadian nickels, old pre-1999 Canadian quarters, all half dollars I could get my hands on, and any silver! Currently I have so much Canadian copper pennies I probably have over 100 pounds of them lying on shelves.
I think it makes some sense to hoard the copper cents but not nickels etc. The cents are worth about 2x face at the moment, but nickels etc have a long way to catch up before their bullion value exceeds face value. I'm sure someone did the math already. Anyone have the numbers on hand?
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Posted 11/29/2018 7:12 pm
