Are 100 year old US coins going to be common in circulation?
291fifth
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Right now it is still possible to find coins that are more than 75 years old in general circulation ... but they aren't common. In the not so distant future, however, it may be commonplace to find such coins. Coins more than 50 years old are relatively easy to find and are often still in reasonable condition. They have many years of potential circulation in front of them.
Do you think 100 year old US coins in circulation are likely in the not too distant future?
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Because of inflation, no.
There will still be enough 1965 quarters that low grades and culls could circulate even in 30 years if present trends continue. All coins over G+ will have been removed by then by collectors but there would still be 250,000,000 low grades and culls. in a projected population of ~90 billion quarters this would give them an incidence of about 1 1965 in 360 coins or one in every eight rolls. Of course there will be other old quarters as well so it should only take about two rolls to find a 75 year old or older quarter. Dimes will be much tougher due to higher attrition and larger populations.
But projecting out this far is kind of pointless since excessive government spending assures that the value of the quarter will be negligible even sooner. It's very difficult to imagine these still being used in only 25 years. Remember as recently as 2007 when the LME defaulted on their nickel contracts the value of the metal in a clad quarter exceeded the value of the metal in silver quarters back in 1935. Copper and nickel are climbing again now and if we're going to demand truly stainless steel in the future then nickel will again sell for $35 a pound.
Cents don't actually circulate and are just mass produced landfill designed to keep people from noticing they have no value at all any longer because they cost more to handle and count than their face value.
Nickels circulate but the attrition is stupendous at over 4% annually. Dimes are over 3%.
As coins wear their chance of being lost through misadventure increases slightly. They become lighter, thinner, and have a lower frictional coefficient and lower angular momentum which combine to increase the odds of being lost. Old quarters are actually getting thin enough that this is becoming a significant factor, I believe. I wouldn't expect to see many 75 or 80 year old coins in circulation in the future other than quarters.
Of course there are 79 year old nickels in circulation now but the nickel will be gone within five years in almost any eventuality. The mint is starting to feel the pain of rising copper prices even right now.
In 25 years, there may not be many coins of any type in circulation....other than 'Bit' type coins.
How many 1916 coins were found in circulation, last year ? I suppose as many from 1917 were circulated this year.
I am not necessarily disputing anything you say as you have clearly done some homework. However, these are some pretty bold statements and I am curious where the supportive data comes from (I suspect the process would be very interesting to many of us if you cared to share it).
Some of my own (unscientific) - observations....
I still see tons of old nickels when I go through boxes. 1964 is a very popular date, as are some dates in the 1940s (1940, 1946, etc.). I usually get a good mix of decades from the 70s through now, with regular encounters with the earlier decades.
As for the nickel being gone in 5 years, that might be true but if we still have the cent now, why would we get rid of the nickel within 5 years? Just wondering.... (At the very least I would expect the nickel to take over the cent's position on the totem pole and then limp along for a while.)
As for the cent being a mass produced place-holder for transactions, I have felt that way for some time, but I have started limited roll searching of cents and I am amazed at the variety I am getting. If cents aren't "circulating" then they are being hoarded and then occasionally dumped back into the supply chain. (Same for nickels - I see different mixtures sometimes in boxes I search - a spike in older nickels for example).
Aside from cents which some people literally throw away, where do the other coins go? I assume a lot go into jars or cans to be held until a trip to the bank years later.
No, 100 year old coins will never be common in circulation. Relatively soon, market forces will cause the cents to be discontinued, a little later five cents will be discontinued. Since there are no dimes or quarters before 1964 in everyday use, that gets you back into a potential 60 to 80 year range (depending upon exactly when the cents and five cents disappear).
Approximately 6% fewer circulating coins were made in 2016 compared to 2015, and it looks like that same level of drop is likely this year.
Whenever the USA discontinues minting cents, either the Philadelphia Mint or the Denver Mint can be shuttered forever.
Our daily circulation coins are a relic, a fetish of what used to be all money.
Most people find coins a nuisance for commerce now. The government continues to produce them due to seigniorage and inertia.
Here's a warning parable for coin collectors...
You can separate out several hundred nickels by date and get a pretty good feel for what's going on. You'll get lower attrition rates than I suggest but this is only because attrition on nickels is soaring. Look at the recent mintages and how they dwarf older mintages. And it's these higher mintages to replace coins that re lost or hoarded that make this so painful for the mint. 5c isn't much money any longer and the real cost of making these is getting back up to 5c or a little higher. As metals prices increase the number being pulled out will increase and as inflation increases and the value of 5c erodes even further more will be lost and destroyed.
Of course my projection assumes a continued increase in the price of copper and some increase in nickel as well as more inflation.
These older nickels haven't really been in circulation since they were made. Most were held out for years at a time by the public who noticed they were older. You can see this by the fact that they are in nearly the same average condition they were in in 1965. the typical late-'40's nickel will be in better condition than the '65 or '66 nickels which have seen steady circulation. Finding an XF 1941 is far easier than an XF 1971.
The cent will go with the nickel probably.
I don't expect the denomination of 5c to end, merely the large chunk of cu/ni of which it is currently composed. Perhaps common sense will prevail and they'll make a small aluminum "nickel".
Exactly. This is happening on small and large scales.
I believe a lot of people are throwing away everything but quarters now days ands some toss all their change. But nickels are big and take up a lot of space. Dimes have twice the value and are well less than half the size.
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P.S., my spellcheck seems to not like the word ....claiming. Or cleaning. Or Clarkson. Or cladding. Or Claiding. Or....Oh he'll.....anyway.....You ROCK...."C.L.A.D.K.O.N.G" ????? I'll try this..... I like your post, clad-king. BINGO!!!!!! You ROCK....CLAD-KING!!!!
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100 years? No. We'll be cashless society w/i a decade.
A cool topic.
I'll always marvel at how fast so many insane amounts of wheaties and buffaloes disappeared by the 1970s. Silver makes sense, sure, but not common date Wheaties.
well, no, it should all already be aluminum....
maybe, but the day we go aluminum is the day I'll cap my collection at forever. I hate how cheap they feel (which I do understand is the point)
We better think twice about a North Korea/China War because NOTHING is permanent and we could see our future coins denominated in Yuans.
BTW I got a 1932 cent in VG in change yesterday.
I strongly doubt predictions about a cashless society in five, ten....or even twenty years. Cash, be it coins or bills, is ingrained in people..... sure, there are some who rely on plastic even now.... However, that is an extreme minority of the population in the United States. Plus, the rest of the world will still be operating on cash, for the most part. No, cash will stay.. long after all of us are gone to the big bourse....Cheers, RickO
How about "privatize" the cent and nickel. Let political parties, retail merchants, rich egotists...whoever, mint and transfer the coins to the US Treasury. Let them get tax credits for this. Wouldn't you like new pennies with Flo from Progressive, the GEICO lizard etc etc on them? Imagine an election year! Hillary Nickels!
Hey! You stole that idea from me. I made that suggestion for the cent over a decade ago. I do see some potential issues. but the idea of letting merchants, companies, etc. make cents with advertising on at least one side would relieve the Mint of that production (and negative seignorage). Rules would have to be in place to make sure private issuers did not profit from seignorage (if that was ever an issue, which is unlikely) and that they make coins of a specified size and metallic content. Might be best to specify that they have to be made in the USA. Aside from that, let them loose. It worked during the recession/depression of the 1830s and during the Civil War....
@cladking : thx for that additional information. There is a lot there to ponder....
I can only add that sometimes other unforeseen events or dynamics can impact the anticipated situation.
For example, I think that at least to some small extent, the popularity of coin counting machines (Coinstar, machines in banks and credit unions) may be impacting mintage/demand for new coins. In the old days a few hearty souls like myself had no issue rolling coins, but many "civilians" just tossed their coins into a jar to be addressed years or decades later. Now, anyone can easily cash in quantities of old coins, so old mintages are returning to commerce more quickly than before.
As for "collectors" pulling older coins (even early clad quarters) from circulation as the years go by, I think that the number of collectors will decline, Some areas of collecting (stamps being the best example) have been decimated by lack of new participants. Most here on the forum are very experienced and even nostalgic about some coins, but a lot of younger people won't take up the hobby and also their experience with coins will be very different than ours. They are more familiar with debit and credit cards, Apple Pay, etc.
I feel that there has never been a time since I started collecting in the early 1970s when so much older material goes unnoticed by the general public. For example, not only have I found silver coins in the reject tray of Coinstar machines, I have found silver on TOP of the Coinstar machine (on the shelf) - someone pulled a Mercury dime out of the reject tray and then left it there. And as for Bicentennial quarters, I think I find more in rolls now than I did in the late 70s (I am not even sure that is an exaggeration). Last year I bought some nickel rolls from the bank and there was a vintage buffalo nickel clearly visible on one end. And after searching countless 1000s of nickels I finally found my first Liberty V nickel this year in a roll, and then I found a second one weeks later.
It will be very interesting to see how it all evolves.
We can't even get rid of the cent without a massive outcry, the nickel is here for a long spell. Cashless society will be way off in the future as well. The public can't even get over the cent, so getting rid of all cash won't happen in my lifetime.
indeed. No one can predict the future because the future is caused by things that haven't happened yet.
You might be surprised how little difference Coin Star really makes. Of course they had a large impact in their early days as they contributed to decreasing the total amount of coin people had in their homes but this is only n impact now as they expand further. Even before Coinstar very few quarters were kept out of circulation for more than three years.
I don't believe you're correct here. Every year the circulating coinage gets more interesting and there are more and more different quarters and other types. Every year something like a nice XF 1970 stands out more in pocket change. It is this variety and the perception of age and differences in appearance of the coins that leads people to collect.
I guess we'll have to wait and see for sure but I wager this is still the fastest growing part of the hobby t this time.
Yes. There are a lot more '76 quarters in change and it is increasing every year. People have been releasing these ever since the first state coins in 1999 were released. They are also much less noticeable now so are more likely to escape detection.
I've been watching all this pretty closely since 1965 and it's all just fascinating to me.
http://www.kitcometals.com/charts/zinc_historical_large.html
Zinc is soaring and a new penny has nearly a cent's worth of metal in it. The mint has to be in distress.
They're spending about $30 to make a thousand pennies with a life expectancy of about five or six years. They just end up in landfill but throwing them in the trash does no good because they just waste another three cents to make a new one.
Cladking - your speaking common sense, the mint / government doesn't do that. The metals being worth more than the coin has been going on for a long time, but still no change. Canada pulled the plug on the cent, but it seems in the US if one person complains the idea goes away.
The mint is making up these losses by selling mint sets, high cost over melt bullion and collectors coins.
Regarding cents, as far as I know they are not sitting in Mint/Fed vaults like the dollar cons did (with mintages mandated by Congress). The cents are produced because someone is ordering them.
Some ideas to reduce cent demand immediately:
1) customers decline/refuse the cents back in change (effectively rounding the bill up the next nickel increment)
2) stores voluntarily round the bill down to the nearest nickel.
If people are really serious about trying to eliminate the cent from their lives they can immediately implement # 1, and the stores can donate the extra money to charity, keep it, or whatever.
If stores are serious about reducing handling costs associated with cents, then they can immediately implement # 2 and absorb the loss of a few cents on each transaction.
The problem with forced rounding is that some people can/will demand that they pay the exact amount and not be cheated their pennies due to rounding. But, the voluntary steps above would have no impact on people who were not onboard with rounding.