Nickel bullion coins

[Dave Ridley]

OK now for those here who have been pining for a one ounce copper bullion coin....of course such a coin continues to "not exist;" however here is a thought.   Pre-1982 Canadian nickels (.999 nickel content) have  a current melt value of about $21 a pound.  That was also roughly the average price between March 1 and March 16.   On ebay, they seem to sell consistently for around $15 - $25 a pound, or 15 - 25 u.s. cents per 5 canadian cents of face value.  I guess that works out to a bit less than 4x face value.   They seem to be somewhat thinly traded.   I don't know yet if coin stores will take them at a viable price.

As of March 16 I see 33 listings over the last 16 days, 20% of which failed to sell.  There were about four sellers and an average of perhaps three bidders per item.   The nickels seemed to sell repeatedly for prices which (not including shipping) were as low as 75% of melt value and as high as 125% of melt value.   However the only listings that sold so high were small-quantitiy listings, around half a pound.

Most of the sellers seem to be in Canada and shipping costs seem to be high, around two bucks a pound.  I didn't include shipping costs above.

I don't own any of these nickels but am curious to see how much interest there is in such items.  They strike me as interesting for diversification purposes.   If there is a demand for them around here, maybe I will figure out a way to buy them low and make them available low.

[Pat McCotter]

It is a Canadian five-cent coin equal in face value to 1/20 of a Canadian dollar. It was minted from 1946-1951 and 1955-1981.

Currently nickel is trading at 7.3081 USD/lb. This would place the coin at 0.0724142 USD per coin. Since there are about 100 Canadian nickels per pound this would currently be 7.24 USD/lb.

[Pat McCotter]

BTW, here are pages to find current melt-price per coin.

US - http://www.coinflation.com/unitedstates/
CN - http://www.coinflation.com/canada/