99.9% nickel Canadian

[FormerTeller]

...dimes?

I started to post this in "Coins", then "Precious Metals", then "Scrap Metals". It didn't seem to fit anywhere, so here it is; if my post gets moved, so be it.

While double-checking the year Canada stopped minting dimes in silver (the '68 Canadian dime I found stuck to a magnet - dang!), I did a double-take when I noticed that Canadian dimes minted between 1968 and 1999 are 99.9% nickel. I knew many pre-1982 nickels had that composition, but not dimes.

Quick math problem: how high would the price of nickel (the metal) have to go make dimes worth more than a dime? By my calculations about $22/pound, which it has exceeded in the last 5 years. Am I figuring this right?

I hadn't quite decided what to do with all the Canadian coins I've found. Been holding onto the 98% copper cents and 99.9% nickels; now I might just hold onto the dimes as well, and sell them if the price of nickel rises or if the value of the Canadian dollar exceeds the US dollar.

Any thoughts?

 

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[mts]

According to coinflation.com the nickel based dimes are currently worth 4.27 cents. So your calculations are correct. Nickel would have to go to $22.15 a pound for that dime to be worth 10 cents (USD).

 

[sagittarius98]

The 99.9% nickel nickels are worth keeping though. According to Coinflation, they are worth $0.0937411 today. That is almost double face value They were made until 1981.

 

[SilverFace]

what's even more interesting is when nickel prices get to $22/lb the 75% copper & 25% nickel U.S. nics with be worth about twice face. And as of right now anyway, you can be guaranteed to find a near 100% of those in every U.S. nickel box.

 

[That Canadian Guy]

Because Canada had so much nickel from mining and we still do after silver was removed it seemed sensible to replace the silver coins with pure nickel coins because we had such an abundance of the metal. So from 1968-1999 the dime, quarter and half were made from pure nickel. Most of the nickels minted were pure nickel until 1981. The dollar coin was also pure nickel until 1986 until it was replaced with the loonie in 1987. Only the nickel has a higher metal value than face value. The reason pure nickel nickels stopped being minted was because it the metal was too expensive to be used for a coin with a low face value. The metal to face value ratio still made sense for the other denominations until the mint came up with an even cheaper composition. Your dime(s) is (are) nothing special, here they are by no means uncommon and when I search they just get thrown back because they are magnetic. It would take a while before the price of nickel ever got that high but it did once so lets keep hoping. If you have a question about any Canadian coins/currency then feel free to shoot me a message.