Time to notice ordinary nickels again

I didn’t plan it that way, but yesterday’s blog about clad coins segues nicely into the news that the metallic value of the U.S. five-cent coin, popularly called the nickel since its introduction in 1866, once again has exceeded face value. It has been quite a long time since this has been true as copper and nickel prices had been knocked hard by the financial crisis.

I noticed this yesterday on the Coinflation.com Web site after the commodity markets had ceased trading.

The premium over face value is slight and it would not pay to melt coins at current values, but the .0508741 value is enough to prompt me to remark that the new year will probably revive the question in Congress as to just what the coin should be made of.

It probably is not a priority and it easily could be postponed as long as overall coin demand remains light and the Treasury ban on melting or exporting the coins remains in effect.

The nickel is not a clad coin. It is a homogenous alloy of 75 percent copper and 25 percent nickel. The irony is that the price of copper has more effect on the melt value of the nickel than does nickel.

The value of the current copper-coated zinc cent is .0065694, so there is no imminent danger of melting of this denomination.

The old 95-percent copper alloy pieces is another story. Each of these cents now has a metallic value of more than two cents, or .0217706 to be Coinflation precise. The melting ban makes this just an interesting point.

What will the future bring? What I know is I will be watching the Coinflation.com Web site closely in 2010. Perhaps you should, too.