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Nickels & Dimes Galore!

The company I work for has an Honor System when it comes to paying for coffee. Everyone is supposed to pay $0.30 per cup of coffee. You can pay for a whole week in advance. Some people even drop a $20 in the bin every week.

There's always some joker who put in foreign coins in the bin. Recently I checked with the coffee money collector to see if he's got any Canadian Nickels. Whaddaya know, he handed me a 2 and a half pound sack of foreign coins!

They're all 'bank rejects' as the counting machine would not accept them. He can't do anything with them so he gave me the whole sack. Our agreement was a simple one. Any coins that I would like to keep, I can buy from him at a discount. The rest I can just bring back to him. There are coins from a few different countries: Canada, Great Britain, France, India, Turkey, etc. Quite a few foreign coin, but mostly Canadian quarters and Canadian pennies.

And my 99.9% pure nickel Canadian Five Cent coin hoard is now 16 coins strong. Guess I'm gonna have to keep my day job for a while longer.

A Nickel Saved?

Around where I live (Michigan), we frequently encounter Canadian coins in everyday transactions. Those things are the worst! Once you get them, you can't spent them. You can't take them to the bank, and you can't use them in parking meters, or vending machines. In this way, I have been forced to start a small hoard of Canadian coins.

But with the price of base metal on the rise in recent years, those Canadian coins aren't half bad. Take for instance, the Canadian Five Cent coin. Those that are minted between 1963-1981 are made of 99.9% pure nickel. The official weight of each coin is 4.54 gram.

It takes 100 of those old coins to accumulate 1 pound of nickel. That is, your cost of 1 lb of nickel is only $5 CDN. The current spot price of nickel is about $13 USD a pound. At one point in the past 12 months, nickel actually shot past $23 USD a pound.

But good luck finding those old nickels. You're definitely not the first one to have figured this out.

A Penny Saved

With the price of base metals such as copper, zinc, and nickel rising in recent years, the cost of producing the penny and nickel has exceeded their face values. This has led some people to start hoarding pennies and nickels, and a subsequent law in 2006 banning the melting of US coins. That law, which was in effect for only five months, has since been extended on April 16, 2008.

Copper Pennies:
From 1962 to 1982, the US penny is composed of 95% copper and 5% zinc. With an official weight of 3.11 grams, each penny contains 2.95 grams of copper. There is one pound of copper in 154 copper pennies.

Price of copper (if salvaged from copper pennies) is $1.54 per pound.

The price of copper is between $3 - $4 per pound for the past 12 months. If you save your copper pennies you could be doubling your money (if you don't get caught melting them).

Zinc Pennies:
From 1983 to the present, the US penny is made from a core of 99.2% zinc, then copper plated. The total content of these pennies is 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper. The public was largely unaware of this change, although debasement is an old trick. With an official weight of 2.5 grams, each penny contains 2.44 grams of zinc. There is a pound of zinc in 186 pennies.

Price of zinc (if salvaged from zinc pennies) is $1.86 per pound.

The price of zinc is between $1.00 - $1.80 per pound for the past 12 months. It is currently not worthwhile to hoard zinc pennies.

Steel Pennies
In a recent hearing on Capital Hill, it was pointed out that it cost the US Mint 1.7 cents to make a penny, due to labor costs & overhead. The nickel is worse, costing nearly 9 cents at a metal price of 7 cents. The production of pennies and nickels resulted in a lost of about $100 million to taxpayers in 2007. Some lawmakers have proposed legislation to change the content of the US penny to a cheaper material: steel.

Commodity prices and economics will prevail. Steel core copper plated cents are coming to the US sooner or later. Our neighbor, Canada, has changed to steel coinage since the year 2000. A complete composition listing of Canadian coins is available at the Royal Canadian Mint (visit the section titled 'The Passion', and select the link titled 'Our Coins' which is located in the grey shaded area on the right hand side of the page).

A penny saved is 2 pennies earned. If you are considering hoarding pennies, you might want to visit the MegaPenny Site to make sure you have enough storage room.

CHASE $100 or $125 Bonus

Chase Bank $100 New Checking Account Bonus. Expires 5/31/08
For existing Chase customers, the offer is $125. Expires 6/30/08

In a Nut Shell:
Open a Chase Free Checking account and Chase will give you a $100 or $125 bonus. To avoid monthly service fees, set up a direct deposit to the account or make at least five debit card purchases per month. No minimum balance requirement.

What's the Catch?

• The offer appears to be "by invitation" only. Contact me if you want the promo code.
• The $100 or $125 bonus you get will be reported on Form 1099-INT, so you'll have to pay taxes on it.
• You'll probably have to buy your first box paper checks, which probably will reduce your gain by about $25.
• If you close your account within 6 months (180 days) of account opening, you will have to pay back the bonus.

Final Verdict:
The Chase offer is similar to the recent Key Bank $100 Bonus offer. Your real gain will be closer to less after factoring in a box of paper checks and taxes. However, Chase has less stringent requirements than Key Bank. Key Bank requires two automatic payments of $100 each, while Chase only requires five debit card purchases (but no minimum spending per purchase).

Tide with Dawn StainScrubber Detergent

For a free sample of the new Tide with Dawn StainScrubbers laundry detergent.
Visit TideWithDawn. While supplies last...

3/25/08 Update: Got mine today in the mail. Took only about a week. Single use sample. Their webpage is still valid so get yours before they're gone.

Walmart Free Samples

The products varies over time, so you never know what they'll give away.
Free samples include:

• lotion (various brands)
• contact lens (Dailies, FreshLook)
• trash bags (Glad)
• hair care products

When you're at the Walmart site, click on the "Free Samples" button and it will refresh the screen with different free samples that you can request. In general, you have to fill out a *very* short form to get the product sample.

Visit Walmart.