Will the five cent piece eventually be debased?
fivecents
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The five cent piece is the last circulating coin to have any value in it's metal content. Will the US goverment replace the nickel content in the five cent piece with a cheaper metal?
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There are, from what I see, two real arguments for eliminating the penny: senioriage (sp?) on a penny is extremely low, and very soon the mint may be making them at a deficit, though certainly not a huge deficit, and certainly the senioriage on other coins would more than make up for it. The second reason is that the penny is worthless. Is not the nickel, too, worthless? And the dime? They argue that a penny can't buy anything today (not true, have you seen the penny chicklet machines?), but what can a nickel buy? The only thing I'm aware of is those little peppermint patties at checkout lines.
Will we not, a few years after the penny is finally discontinued, hear a great clamor over how the nickel is "worthless" and should be done away with? I think that the metal content of the nickel will remain unchanged, but I wonder if the nickel itself can survive much longer than the penny?
<< <i>The nickel is mostly copper and thus doesn't have much value in terms of metal content. >>
Steve...It is the nickel content I am refering to. I believe the five cent piece contains close to 2 to 3 cents worth of nickel.
ddink....The five cent piece has more nickel content than the quarter, so I believe the five cent piece would be the next coin to be debased.
tige in having to lower the relief of all the coinage and in having coinage which is often
poorly struck. Of course, they also didn't add many other tangible and intangible costs
of the production and circulation of this toxic and highly reactive coin.
The nickel certainly comes much closer to containing its face value is metal than any other
coin now, though a spurt in zinc prices to historic highs could change that. A nickel, too, is
of so little value that the economy doesn't really need it to function smoothly, though it is
critical to make change since the dime and quarter aren't compatable otherwise.
It seems likely that more effort will be spent on trying to keep this denomination afloat
than even the cent. And it seems likely that it will have Monticello on the reverse even
longer...
<< <i>Which is why having frozen the denominations years ago was a silly idea in light of inflation. The corrective measure is either to re-value the coinage (bad idea) or reflect inflation by adding new denominations. >>
I suppose the genie's already out of the bottle and there's little chance of going on the gold standard again...
<< <i> The five cent piece is the last circulating coin to have any value in it's metal content. >>
Great point! I never thought about it, but you're probably right. I'm going to do some calculations and I'll get back to you.
This is how I started figuring it out.
Nickel weighs 5 grams
.750 copper
.25 nickel
Copper is about 1.25 a pound
Nickel is about 5.65 a pound
Where I get confused is do you use troy oz or regular oz? How many grams are there to a pound?
Conversion I use for pounds to grams is 1 pound = 454 grams (Actually I think it is closer to 453.5 grams per pound but I'm not trying to be that precise.)
So for value of nickel in the coin
5.65 / 454 = $0.01244 or 1.244 cents per gram of nickel
5 grams X .25 = 1.25 grams of nickel X 1.244 = 1.56 cents worth of nickel in the coin
for the copper the math works the same way
1.25 / 454 = .275 cents per gram
5 grams X .75 = 3.75 grams of copper X .275 = 1.03 cents worth of copper
Tom
Conder101 is correct.
<< <i>I foresee a future of plastic coins. >>
I believe that's already happened in a couple of countries, but wouldn't plastic coins be easy to counterfeit?
<< <i>US five cent piece has 1.56 cents worth of nickel in it and 1.04 cents worth of copper. >>
Wow.... 2.60 cents value per a single Five cent piece in Nickel and Copper alone. I bet The goverment will debase these coins sometime in the near future.