More Nickel damage
Ok so a little bit more experimentation. So pounding on a nickel with a hammer to flatten it out is surprisingly easy. The above former nickel only took about 3-4 minutes of pounding. And well all of the text and any distinguishing features are completely gone from the Nickel. Furthermore the flattening on the Nickel is fairly close in size to a quarter. I think I have successfully devalued some currency.
Now I’m a fairly honest person and I certainly wouldn’t want to break any laws trying to pass off this former nickel as a quarter. However, this did get me thinking. Based on the US Mint specifications the weight difference between a Nickel and a Quarter is fairly imperceptible. In theory someone could create a quarter die and flatten out a Nickel and make a fairly good Quarter facsimile from the material. Obviously this would be highly illegal. And I doubt this would be at all practical for the financial gain as building a die and press system wouldn’t be cheap, and the dies wouldn’t likely last all that long due to pressing an already pressed coin with uneven textures.
It’s worth noting that the melt value of US Nickels today are worth more than the coin itself, and of course the US Mint spends more money manufacturing these coins than their value. Perhaps we need some currency reform. Since the US government is so straddled for cash perhaps we impose a ’rounding tax’ so all purchases end in 10 cent denominations, and do away with pennies and nickels. The state governments could even simply direct that money to schools, and who could argue with that?
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