Melting Pennies Nickels Coins For Profit
What kind of crazy government keeps coins in circulation that are worth more melted than their face value? Does this not seem odd to anyone else? So basically, the government could use blank coins, with nothing printed on them, and increase the value of our currency by billions of dollars….sigh…
By Barbara Hagenbaugh, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — People who melt pennies or nickels to profit from the jump in metals prices could face jail time and pay thousands of dollars in fines, according to new rules out Thursday.
Soaring metals prices mean that the value of the metal in pennies and nickels exceeds the face value of the coins. Based on current metals prices, the value of the metal in a nickel is now 6.99 cents, while the penny’s metal is worth 1.12 cents, according to the U.S. Mint.
That has piqued concern among government officials that people will melt the coins to sell the metal, leading to potential shortages of pennies and nickels.
“The nation needs its coinage for commerce,” U.S. Mint director Ed Moy said in a statement. “We don’t want to see our pennies and nickels melted down so a few individuals can take advantage of the American taxpayer. Replacing these coins would be an enormous cost to taxpayers.”
—- This section was added by Shane —-
The US Government has no control over the value of our coinage or any other part of our monetary system. This is because we have a fiduciary monetary system that is based 100% on how the individual views the value of their money. The money itself is considered fiat, or unbacked by any physical asset such as silver or gold bullion. It is worth exactly what you and I think it is worth, based on mutual trust (fiduciary means “trustee”).
To explain this a bit further: Consider that you work for $10 an hour. After taxes, you most likely take home around $7.50 an hour. At the end of a 40 hour work week, you now have a total of $300 dollars. You now have a base idea of how much $300 is worth to you and you must then decide what you want to spend this money on. If you decide somewhere along the lines that you simply cannot afford to work for $10 an hour, you will either ask for a raise or move to a better paying position. In the meantime, if you don’t have any savings you most likely will not spend the whole week’s check on a $300 television set. Assuming that you are the average American, the manufactureres of the television set is probably aware of this and are willing to provide a model within your price range.
In this manner, you decide the intrinsic value of a dollar. Those in sales are constantly raising prices to make more money and the consumers are getting raises or new jobs to keep up. This in turn causes the employers who are in sales to raise their prices and so forth. Meanwhile, the value of the dollar drops and drops until a new system is brought to bear, perhaps one that is regulated federally such as the Chinese system. Since Americans as a whole are ignorant of their monetary system despite it being taught in public schools, they continue to blame their banking system and government over their money woes. In truth, we are doing it to ourselves and only we can stop it. Not that it would ever happen.
The American monetary system has been based on trust since it began. At one point it was based soley on the gold bullion backing it, of course that was long ago when other nations required any international trades to be backed by gold or silver bullion. Once the “money” grew larger than the value of all known bullion, we quietly adopted the fudiciary system and have been trudging along ever since, waiting for the bubble to pop.
When the first coins were minted, they were of precious metals whose very own value spoke for itself. From mid 1942 to 1945, the infamouse “war nickels” were created. These coins are 56% copper, 35% silver and 9% manganese. The only other U.S. coins to use manganese are the Sacagawea and Presidential dollars. Now that we find that copper has exceeded the trust value of a penny, the federal government should call for a return of all nickels and pennies and re-issue the coinage in baser metals, which is what happened to gold coins in the early 1800s. On February 8, 2008, a bill was introduced in the US House of Representatives that will allow for changing the metal components in US coins due to the rising cost of commodities and the rapidly declining U.S. Dollar.
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