April 30, 2003
What's with all the changes at the US Mint in the past few years? I guess the new bills addressed security issues, but there's also this business of making nickels into collectors items:
Latest figures show nickel circulation at 18.9 billion. The Mint said it would increase production if the public began collecting the new nickels in large numbers.So, if large numbers of nickels go out of circulation, where does their value go? Back to the US Mint? It's quite a trick to increase the money supply without causing inflation.
I don't know how successful the nickels will be, but a lot of people seem to be collecting the state quarters. If one in twenty Americans (and anecdotally this seems like a conservative estimate) collects a complete set of 50 state quarters, that's $12.50 x 13 million = $162.5 million... not a bad budget supplement for the US Mint!
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