Talk:Nickel (Canadian coin)

Mintage by Year

Does anyone think it would be a good idea to add a chart with the number of nickels and varieties minted for each year?

-Share Bear 03:28, 6 April 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Share Bear (talk • contribs)

If one follows the reference I have just added (see History of Composition, and References) to the Royal Canadian Mint website, the annual mintages from 1908 are shown there, and kept up-to-date. The "from 1908" is presumably because that's when the Mint in Canada began operations. Variety mintages are not shown, I don't know offhand where that is available. --RCopple (talk) 17:26, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

I found a fairly reliable source: The Standard Catalog of World Coins. It's available on archive.org, which is great since the book itself is pretty pricey. Though, I have noticed that some of the values in the catalogs differ from the ones provided by the Royal Canadian Mint, sometimes in the magnitude of 100,000, and sometimes 1,000. Some of them could also be typos (e.g. 1918 is listed in the catalog as mintage 6,052,298, while RCM lists it as 6,052,289), but others I can't shake the idea that I'm missing something (e.g. 1910, catalog says 3,850,325, but RCM says 5,850,325?) Stranger still is that sometimes the RCM's annual reports[1] contradict their own mintages (e.g. 2010, RCM 5 cent piece page reports mintage 126,800,000, but annual report discloses 126,840,000). I also looked through the "J&M's Catalogue of Canadian Coins"[2] site that was used to get the mintages on the penny's page, but it doesn't seem to be consistent. Sometimes it reports the same numbers as the World Coins Catalog (e.g. 1926) but sometimes the same as RCM (e.g.1995), and sometimes something different entirely (e.g.1910).

Might be safe to trust the RCM site for 1908 onwards, and the catalog for anything prior, but it'd be nice to get a more concrete source for those earlier years. JazzHandsIncarnate (talk) 17:34, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Spelling

Being a Canadian article, should not the occurrences of the word 'nickel' become 'nickle', since that is the preferred Canadian spelling? DarrenBaker (talk) 02:02, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

DarrenBaker: Nickle is considered a misspelling in Canada and elsewhere such as Britain. I almost wish you were correct, though; far more words end with -ickle than -ickel, for starters. Mebden (talk) 12:56, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

2017 Commemorative Nickel

A 1967-2017 Commemorative nickel celebrating Canada's 150 year anniversary since Confederation was issued for all in circulation coin denominations, including the nickel. The reverse image, LIVING TRADITIONS, by Gerald Gloade reimagines the quintessential Canadian beaver in the traditional style of the Algonkian, celebrating 150 years of cultures meeting, sharing and evolving together. SquashEngineer (talk) 19:09, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Lead (holding spot)

The denomination (i.e., the Canadian five-cent piece) had been introduced in 1858 as a small, thin sterling silver coin, that was colloquially known as a "fish scale", not a nickel.

The larger base metal version made of nickel, and called a "nickel", was introduced as a Canadian coin in 1922, originally as 99.9% nickel metal.

These coins were magnetic, due to the high nickel content.

Versions during World War II were minted in tombac (a copper-zinc alloy), then chrome and nickel-plated steel, and finally returned again to nickel at the end of the war.

A plated steel version was again made from 1951 to 1954 during the Korean War.

Rising nickel prices eventually caused another switch to cupronickel in 1982 (an alloy similar to the US nickel), but more recently, Canadian nickels are minted in nickel-plated steel, containing a small amount of copper.

Due to the aforementioned rise in nickel prices, since 1982, five-cent pieces composed of 99.9% nickel have been slowly removed from circulation to be melted by the Royal Canadian Mint.

Only cupronickel and modern multi-ply plated steel five-cent pieces are considered "circulation coins".

As a result, pre-1982 five cent pieces are often sought by collectors.

From 1942 to 1962, Canadian five-cent coins were produced in a distinctive 12-sided shape, evocative of the British threepence coin.

Originally this was done to distinguish the copper-coloured tombac coins, from pennies. However, the characteristic shape was retained for another eighteen years after 1944 when this coin was later produced in 99.9% nickel and chrome-plated steel.

The coin is produced by the Royal Canadian Mint at its facility in Winnipeg.

- Knowledgekid87 (talk) 01:17, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

References