The Special Case For Jefferson Nickels

[dogodog]

I run mostly 5khz and 14khz  say 80% - 20%. The kruzer registers a 27-28 with a solid tone. My buddy who has a nox 800 rarely finds nickels also. Another question about coins is distribution. Say the Philadelphia mint makes 5 million nickles, How do they distribute to each state? and how many coins does each state get? Odd question I know.

And like Joe d, I also find your long posts full of good stuff. As for the library thing, Who wants paper cuts when we can find everything here on DP.

Keep up the posts on things we all think about, but rarely investigate.

[schoolofhardNox]

I think some detectors just don't respond well to nickels at depth. I have the Nox 800 and it hits nickels ok. The GPX does not hit nickels as well as the Fisher AQ. At least at the beach that is what I found. If I want nickels, it would be the AQ all the way. I really think nickels are harder to find or give odd enough signals on a multi frequency, that many people pass them by. Shallow they read well, but at depth I think they read all over the place. I have found places on the beach where I find nickel after nickel,(with the AQ) sometimes 10+ in a small area. They don't seem to give that strong response that silver or copper does.

[GB_Amateur]

3 hours ago, dogodog said:

Say the Philadelphia mint makes 5 million nickles, How do they distribute to each state? and how many coins does each state get? Odd question I know.

Well, then we're both odd 🥴🤪 (probably not the first to think that...).  I've wondered about this very question myself many times and even bought a book I thought may answer that.  I haven't finished the book (it's not quite as light reading as I had hoped, but still good and steeped in history) but so far I haven't read anything about distribution.  I thought the 1964 record high mintage was eclipsed in later years in all denominations but the one (denomination) exception is the nickel -- 2.8 billion is still the record (1999 and 2000 were 2.3 billion and 2.4 billion for 3rd and 2nd place respectively.

13 hours ago, Rick N. MI said:

Do you notice how many 1964 nickels you find. I find a lot of that year.

Yes, they do seem to show up a lot.  1964 was an anomalous mintage (not all coins with that date were minted in 1964 -- they continued well into late summer 1965).  The federal government (legislature in particular) was in a pissy mood and were figuring out a way to kill coin collecting.  They saw it as a threat to the circulation of coins.  (Ironically they eventually went 180 degrees opposite and encouraged the public to pull coins from circulation, thus the State Quarters of 1999-2008!!)  So record numbers of coins were struck with 1964 (both in Philadelphia with no mintmark and in Denver with the -D mintmark).  That was in all denominations, 1 cent through 50 cents.

[dogodog]

So I did a little research and found this.

Putting Coins into Circulation
The procedures for putting coins into circulation are similar to those for currency. The U.S. Mint produces coins in Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco, and ships them to the Federal Reserve Banks and to authorized armored carriers, which supply banks that need coins to meet the public's demand.

The distribution of coins differs from that of currency in some respects. First, when the Fed receives currency from the Treasury, it pays only for the cost of printing the notes. However, coins are a direct obligation of the Treasury, so the Reserve Banks pay the Treasury the face value of the coins. Second, large banks in some Federal Reserve Districts participate in a Direct Mint Shipment Program, and receive coins directly from the Mint. In the New York area, there also is an arrangement under which banks that need coins buy them from banks that have a surplus. To promote the arrangement, the New York Fed stands ready to match banks that have excess coins with those that need coins.July 2013

So my guess is some states will get more of a given coin than others based on their need and demand.

I never considered myself a coin guy, But somehow GB you always peak my interest in all things coin related. THANKS, I hope this can in a small way give you some more unique info.

[GB_Amateur]

16 hours ago, dogodog said:

...Maybe you could post the quantities of Pennies, Nickles, Dimes, Quarters that were produced in a given time frame than the others.

OK, here are the USA coin mintage ratios (taken from Wikipedia).  These are for 1965 through 2018, normalized to the half dollar = 1:

Quarter -- 21.0

Dime -- 22.7

Nickel -- 13.2

Penny -- 113.6

So, yes, fewer nickels than either dimes or quarters, but only at about the 60% level.

My numbers have varied over the years, partly due to my sites, but also caused by different detecting techniques and change of detectors -- the big three:  location, detectorist, detector.  Anyway, with that caveat here are my ratios for modern coins from beginning of 2016 to present, again normalized to a single half dollar found:

Brass dollar -- 4

Quarter -- 455

Dime -- 620

Nickel -- 625

95% Cu Memorial -- 1050

Zincoln Memorial -- 1139  (note:  only coin I sometimes ignore)

Wheat penny -- 294

Thus I've found about the same number of nickels as dimes.  (Old coins are a separate story and not part of these statistics other than the Wheat pennies I tossed in there for reference.)  There are so many variables besides the ones I just mentioned, e.g.:  size of coin affects max detection depth, as does the composition.  Size of coin affects the likelihood that it would have been noticed (by the person who dropped it or even someone else) before it got covered/buried, and even the likelihood that someone who dropped a coin noticed it was missing and went back to look for it.  Finally, the mintage numbers don't necessarily represent circulation numbers.  Notice the disparity in half dollars (minted compared to my finds).  It's been decades since half dollars have seen much circulation but the mint ignored that for a long time.  (Starting in 2002 I think they've just made them for collectors, but not sure about that.  The mintages each year are typically only ~4 million compared to roughly 10 times that many from 1977 to 2001 and 100 times as many in the 1971-76 years.)

 

[GB_Amateur]

Just to round out the subject, here are the top 40 lowest mintages (date+mintmark) Jeffies of the 176 prior to 2017:

Notice both the 2009-P and 2009-D made this list at #33 and #39 respectively.  To find another coin minted in the last 50+ years in the full ordered list you have to go down to 1975-plain (#73).

[Dances With Doves]

 The nickel has a melt value of  about  5.4  cents so it holds true face value and costs the mint money to make it now. I found 338 nickels in 2020.I found 13 at the beach one day.