Cross-Section of US Nickels in Circulation (Part 3 of 4)

[astrostu]

I did this back in 2007 when I sorted through boxes of each circulating denomination, so I thought I'd do it again. I posted the first part of this series (quarters) in June, the second part of this series (dimes) two months ago, and I've finally gotten around to doing the nickels before I end my FY09. From a box of nickels (plus a few that I had lying around), so a sample size of 2046 dateable nickels (1 was a Mexican peso, 2 were undateable Jefferson nickels, and 1 was undateable Buffalo):

 

Buffalo 1920s: 0.10%

Buffalo 1930s: 0.15%

Jefferson 1930s: 0.05%

Jefferson 1940s: 0.24% with 1 that was silver war-time

1950s: 0.78%

1960s: 4.4%

1970s: 8.4%

1980s: 16.3%

1990s: 33.7%

2000s: 35.9%

 

There were two significant things I noticed this time 'round (other than none from 2009). First is that it was EXTREMELY difficult to find any post-~1997 nickels that were from Philadelphia. Out of the 735 that were from the '00s, literally less than 20 were Philadelphia. Granted, I live 30 minutes from the Denver Mint. But, given a decade, I'm surprised that they haven't homogenized more. For the dimes and quarters I did, this was only a problem for the last ~5 years as opposed to the last ~13.

 

The second was that this was the first time I got any Buffalo nickels from circulation (a total of 6). To me, this, along with the above, could have three possible explanations that I can think of. First, given the economy, people are turning into the bank coins that have been laying around a LONG time. Second, given the economy, the Federal Reserve is getting less new coins from the Mint and digging deeper into their older and less-searched inventories to fill bank orders. A third possibility is that even though I've searched through probably about 7000 nickels in my day from circulation, that's still not a decent statistical sample and this could simply be a fluke.

 

 

According to my post about 2 years ago, this is what the distribution was back in 2007, with a sample size of 1995:

 

Jefferson 1930s: 0.05%

Jefferson 1940s: 0.20%

1950s: 0.60%

1960s: 3.5%

1970s: 9.2%

1980s: 15.9%

1990s: 33.4%

2000s: 37.1%

 

 

I created the graph below to show the results. The error bars are based solely upon counting statistics within the sample, and they do not reflect the uncertainty in estimating general circulation results from 1 box of nickels. Within those, the values are statistically identical for all decade bins except for the Buffalo nickels which is explainable through small-number statistics.

 

[astrostu]

Quick bump 'cause I posted this during a general break when folks probably weren't looking.