Probaby a retread topic: Why do we still find 1964 dates cents and nickels in circulation quite easi

SanctionII

Take a pile of loose cents or nickels from circulation and chances are you will find multiple coins dated 1964, some even in surprisingly nice condition for a 40 year old coin.

Anyone have any explanation as to why so many 1964's are still around? [I am sure this topic is a retread, however it is not to me and inquiring minds would like to know].

Gonfunko

Because they made a lot of them and they aren't different from the current examples.

kamehameha00

Sorry, didn't understand your question

It's because there was a surplus of them made and therefore are very easy to find in circulation years later.

ziggy29

There has been no reason to set them side for metal content as with the other denominations. And since the design is the same as today, essentially, there has been little reason to put them away.

Production of coinage in all denominations *easily* set record highs in 1964; no denomination (cent through half) even had a close second place up to that time. Dimes through halves dated 1964 have disappeared from circulation for obvious reasons.

You can still find 1959-63 cents, too, but not nearly as often as '64 because of the sheer number of coins they produced in '64. Nearly 6.5 billion cents were minted in 1964...nearly three times many as any prior year -- and it wasn't until 1973 when the overall cent mintage exceeded the '64 total.

As for nickels...nickel production never exceeded 460 million in a year (from all mints combined) until 1964, when over 2.8 *billion* nickels were minted. Production wouldn't again exceed *one* billion nickels until 1980, and to this day (at least through 2002), the Philly and Denver mints combined *still* haven't ever broken the mintage record for nickels set in '64. You can still find a lot of Jeff dates before 1964, but they're tougher to find because (a) relative to modern mintages they represent a tiny fraction of all nickels extant even if ALL were still in circulation, and (b) some people have put aside any coin older than a certain date (though with nickels there's never been a clean cut-off date like 1958-59 with cents and 1964-65 with dimes and above). I can still find 1939-1941 nickels on rare occasion and 1946-63 nickels with regular but not too common frequency.

cladking

Part of the reason that the mintage was so extreme is that the nation was
in the middle of a coin shortage which started in 1962. One of the steps
taken to alleviate this shortage was to freeze the 1964 date. It was believed
at the time that coin collectors were the cause of the coin shortage because
of their hoarding of rolls and bags of BU coin. The thinking was that if all the
coins in the future were dated 1964 that they'd soon tire of it and there
would be no profit in storing these bags. The '64 issues were actually produced
well into 1965.