Got tired of lugging around the nickels Ponce told me to buy

[AndreaGail]

...so I opened one of the two boxes, what an absolute waste of time, no silver war nickels, no indian heads, nothing. should have just brought the box to the bank and been on my way

exchanged them for three shiny Libertads instead after running them through a coin counter!

[palani]

A roll or two of them come in mighty handy in a bar fight.

[Hitch]

Well, the nickels still have more metal value than their 'worth' of 5 cents. I don't buy boxes of nickels, but I save each one I get.

You probably don't need a whole shitload of nickels, but in a barter situation, they could come in handy. Also, they are better than the paper promises we recieve and pass off each day, paper dollars.

Oh, and get your money out of the banks too. Paper dollars are better than digits that go poof.

[gunDriller]

i did the same thing ! :)

i had a bunch of rolls of nickels, but i 'sold' at face to help pay the bills last year.


it's an intriguing proposition, and cupro-nickel is a very useful metal for marine engineering. that suggests a possible customer for your saved up nickels - companies that do marine engineering.

of course it has the same laws about melting down, but if you sell them at 2 x face for example to some company that needs cupronickel, it's not your concern.


typically, a scrap yard will pay 2/3 to 3/4 of spot for the more valuable industrial metals like copper. but they won't buy some copper castings.

they will buy nickel too, but again, paying less than spot.

there's also the fact that nickel generally has a very high melting temperature, so if you try to melt down the nickels into a form in which a scrap metal place will buy them, you will be spending a lot of money on energy & other foundry costs.


i think generally, it's a good thing to save, because you can always spend them, and they are a valuable industrial metal. especially pure nickel Canadian nickels.

but it's definitely not a get-rich-quick scheme. i think silver & gold will do better because the market for them is much larger.

[madfranks]

Nickels just don't have a high enough value-per-unit ratio to make it worthwhile for long term storage. Unless you're ponce and can just set cases of them in the basement to be left alone for decades. One nickel is 5 grams; you would need 35.71 lbs of nickels to match the purchasing power of one 1/10 oz gold eagle.

[Hitch]

You guys now have me thinking saving nickels is a waste of time and weight. Weight is a concern to me, and shedding a few pounds of nickels gives more weight to be allowed for ammo. I may get rid of my nickels too and convert them to silver.

[osoab]

Nickels just don't have a high enough value-per-unit ratio to make it worthwhile for long term storage. Unless you're ponce and can just set cases of them in the basement to be left alone for decades. One nickel is 5 grams; you would need 35.71 lbs of nickels to match the purchasing power of one 1/10 oz gold eagle.

Don't forget Kyle Bass.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/some-words-advice-kyle-bass

[chad]

i sold all of them and bought silvertown bars.

[gunDriller]

You guys now have me thinking saving nickels is a waste of time and weight. Weight is a concern to me, and shedding a few pounds of nickels gives more weight to be allowed for ammo. I may get rid of my nickels too and convert them to silver.

nickels don't take up vault space though. they make a great book-end, and a good conversation piece.

[AndreaGail]

You guys now have me thinking saving nickels is a waste of time and weight. Weight is a concern to me, and shedding a few pounds of nickels gives more weight to be allowed for ammo. I may get rid of my nickels too and convert them to silver.

That was my thing, I brought them along when I moved a couple months ago and they were a mighty pain to lug.

I could have carried 3 silver rounds no problem at all instead :D