I found a silver nickel

I don't mean to make a big too-do over little, but I found a 1943 P silver jefferson nickel in change this week. As I mentioned in my previous post, the mint halted production of nickels and dimes for the year. As I predicted, this would compel Americans to go into their change drawers and start spending their older coins. I encourage everyone to look more closely at their change for the remainder of the year.

Mint halts production of Nickels and dimes

Note: This is a story previously published at peterplanchet.com.That site has a related video.

The US mint has halted production of all Jefferson Nickels and Roosevelt dimes for the remainder of 2009. The final mintage totals for these coins will be similar to the 1950's. In particular, the 2009D Roosevelt dime should end up with mintage of only around 50 million. Compare this to the billions that were produced over a decade ago. Why the halt? The first reason is the move towards a cashless society. As Americans use credits cards for even the smallest of purchases, the need to produce coins and paper money diminishes. The larger reason, however, is the recession. When the economy was doing well, Americans dumped their daily change into boxes or drawers. Now that there's a recession, those boxes and drawers are being tapped. Ergo, there is no need for new coins. It will be interesting to see how many older coins suddenly turn up in circulation.