For arguments sake let’s say you walk into a store and buy a widget for 75 cents. You dutifully hand over a dollar bill to the store owner, he then apologizes because he has no quarters or dimes and has to make change using five nickels instead. You huff and puff but except the five coins, money is money after all, right? WRONG!

Lately because of the price gyrations in the commodity markets, and due to the different metal compositions of the two coins in question, by giving you five nickels the store owner actually gave you 26.1 cents in change due to the rising price of nickel. Yes that’s right, at today’s market prices the metal in the 5 cent coin is actually worth 5.23 cents, a rather healthy 4+% premium! I bet you are intrigued now about the value of the metal content in the quarter? You are correct to be curious, so allow me to disappoint you! The metal content of a quarter is worth about 4.9 cents at current prices.

Could you have got a better deal by requesting a different breakdown for your 25 cents change? Absolutely. It would be a long shot, but if you asked for your change to be made with 25 pre-1982 pennies, the store owner would have unwittingly given you approximately 57.5 cents worth of copper for the 25 cents of change. The pre-1982 penny’s over generous copper content makes it worth an astounding 2.3 cents at today’s copper prices. In percentage terms that is an incredible premium of 130% over face value. Are you guys still sure Ben Bernanke knows what he is doing? If you think I ride Bumblin’ Ben  hard, I’d just like to make it clear, I don’t hate the man, I just think he is in way over his head and no one is protecting my savings from his reckless monetary policy.

So now you know which coins are worth keeping in your coin jar and not banking, do you want to know what is the worst value coin of the bunch? Of course you do. Well it’s rather fitting actually, as you will see. The coin that is worth the biggest discount from face value as per metal content is none other than the 2007-2010 Presidential Dollar coin! It may have a dollar face value but the metal is worth just shy of 6 cents, a whopping 94% discount to face. Just to be clear this is an equal opportunity thumbing of my nose at the incumbent and previous holder of the ‘Office’ (note the dates of minting on the Presidential Dollar), so no political flaming please!

Where did I get all this great information from? Well here is a major hat tip to the guys over at www.coinflation.com, if you get the chance check out their site. It appeals to my inner coin nerd…

-Luke Sidewalker

-Current balance $25.80