Funny anecdote

Miscellaneous General
1

I’m from Israel. (hold on, that’s the sad part, not the funny part)

Anyway, our old (c. 1985) coins (10 and 50 cent equiv.) are made of 92% Copper, 6% Aluminum and 2% Nickel. Of course, our new, higher denomination coins (2, 5 and 10 Shekel) are just plain steel.

Today, the bank of Israel announced that it is planning to replace the old coins due to rising metal prices (and the not-to-be-mentioned-fact of incredible inflation that wrecked their face value).

So, I ran some numbers. By current LME prices, the 10 Agorot (worth about 3 US cents) is worth 25% more in metal than in face value. The Copper alone is worth more than its face value, the 2% Nickel adds another ~10% premium.

I’ve started advertisement to buy any coin I can get my hand on for 5-10% premium over face value.

If this wasn’t sad, I would have been funny…

2

Actually the other day I was looking up the metal value of Australian coins. The 5, 10, and 20 cent coins are currently worth about 1 cent more than their metal value. Then I realised why the 1 and 2 cent coins are no longer in circulation - their metal value outstripped their fiat value. I’m pretty sure I’ve got a jar of them somewhere. The 5, 10, and 20 cent coins will probably be at that point in a decade.

3

I remember seeing an ad by Swiss government that 5 rappen coin costs 6 rappen to produce (or was it an anti-government ad?).