Nickel Sifting - Ratio Slightly Up

This is one finding that I didn't expect until I checked my earlier records. I got 2,000 nickels from the same source as last time, the Royal Bank of Canada branch at Yonge and Cranbrooke in Toronto, and found that 59 of them were American nickels. The last time I went through a box of 2,000, I got 54.

This increase shouldn't be that surprising. As us Canadians become used to parity with the American dollar, there's little or no point in getting rid of American change after coming back from a trip to the States. There's been more of them lately, although not much more according to Statistics Canada: "'A relatively small rise in the Canada/U.S. exchange rate in the late 1980s and early 1990s provoked a huge increase in same-day auto trips to the US: Since 2002, the largest appreciation of the exchange rate ever has accompanied a relatively small rise in same-day auto trips,' Statistics Canada analyst Francine Roy said in the report."

This isn't the first time I've had my common sense confounded (even though the StatsCan report only covers day trips.) As the first entry disclosed, I found no U.S dimes and only one U.S. quarter in my first series of runs, even though the Canadian dollar was slightly above par at the time I got the respective boxes. I suspect that the only reason I got the U.S. quarter was because it was a commemorative that looked like a Canadian one.

As far as oldies are concerned, I got a close-to-uncirculated 1967 rabbit nickel, fifteen 1964 nickels (a few only lightly circulated), eight 1963s, five 1962s, three 1961s, one 1960 and one 1956-date. The last ten nickels were twelve-sided.

I also found three oddities, all circulated: a 1993 1p coin from the U.K.; a Bermudian nickel from 1988; and, a real oddity which I had to use a few searches to track down: a 1998 50-fils coin from the United Arab Emirates. It looks like the second picture of three on the page that I used to identify the thing, except the one I got is heavily circulated.

I also looked up the worth of those coins using this currency converter. One conversion was unsurprising: the British pence was worth a little more than 2 cents Canadian. The Bermudian nickel, on the other hand, was pegged at a little more than 5 cents Canadian. The third conversion, which was a surprise to me, showed that a 50-fils UAE coin (equal to 0.5 dirham) coverts into 13.8 cents Canadian.

This 'profit', I need hardly say, is theoretical.