From CNN
Either he’s going to be speding a lot of time on the penny slots in Vegas, or he’ll be strolling into a bank asking for 180,000 rolls and a very big bag.
From CNN
Either he’s going to be speding a lot of time on the penny slots in Vegas, or he’ll be strolling into a bank asking for 180,000 rolls and a very big bag.
OR he’ll melt them down, and use them to make… uh… I dunno, some kinda… uh… thing. Y’know, some kinda thing that you need 3.6 million nickles worth of whatever kind of metal to make.
Or they’ll find the poor bastard floating face down in a canal, murdered by morons for effectively unspendable money.
How in the hell would one launder that?
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that they probably make them out of nickel.
(Actually, I don’t think that’s even true anymore…)
According to the US Mint, they’re made of 75% copper & 25% nickel.
Copper! That’s it. My God, the man has gone bonkers. He plans using the copper from the coins to create some giant kind of copper plated 1920’s style death ray. We’re all doomed! Doomed!!!
Amp, I am so mad you posted that before me.
Actually, the market value of copper has gone up in the past few years IIRC, meaning if he had any knowledge of chemistry and the ability to seperate alloys he just may make quite a nice amount of cash off the selling of raw materials.
Then again, that would be pretty cost-prohibitive. And even still, what moron that would still that many nickles have any understanding of metallurgy?
He’s probably figuring on using the nickels to pay for the deposits on the stolen truck load of 54,000 moosehead beers (at least those the bears have not drank). http://novanewsnet.ukings.ns.ca/nova_news_3589_20041021.html
http://www.coinstar.com/us/html/a-home - Everyday, and different grocery stores, for the rest of his life.
Where does one hide 3.6 million quarters?
What if he decides that he wants to buy something expensive?
Trucker: “I’m sorry, I don’t have any large bills. Would you accept smaller stuff?”
Cashier: “Um, I guess so. That total will be $209.99”
Trucker: (Pulls a large bag of nickels out.) “Five cents. Ten cents. Fifteen cents…”
::Penis ensues::
Is that “panic ensues” and you’re suffering through some sort of Freudian nightmare?
I thought, given the turn of the conversation to the issue of the metal content, that i’d try to work out how much the coins would be worth for their metal alone.
The stats for the coins themselves can be found at the US Mint website. According to the site, the nickel is actually 75% copper and 25% nickel, as Mr Blue Sky observed above. Furthermore, each nickel weighs 5 grams.
So, 3.6 millions nickels gives us a total of 18 million grams, or 18,000 kilograms, which works out (according to this site) to 39,682 pounds.
Now, i’m assuming that the percentage of copper and nickel in the coins, given by the Mint, is by mass rather than volume. This would give the following totals:
Copper: .75 x 39,682 = 29,761.5 pounds of copper
Nickel: .25 x 39,682 = 9,920.5 pounds of nickel
Now, the first place i found a reasonably current price for copper and nickel on the commodities market was here (subscription possibly required). The article, which is four days old, gives the prices as:
copper: $US 1.37 per pound
nickel: $US 6.44 per pound.
So, we now get the foillowing totals:
copper: 29,761.5 x 1.37 = 40,773.25 nickel: 9,920.5 x 6.44 = 63,888.02
Total = $104,661.27
That seems like quite a lot of money to me. It’s well over half of the face value of the coins, which is $180,000.
I dunno, seems like they would beat the hell out of a washing machine…
Hypothetically speaking, I think a (fake) vending machine business would do the job. You’d still have to be careful though.
Launderer: Hi, I’m the owner of WiseGuy Vending Co., and I have $6,000 in coins to deposit.
Bank: Why is this all in nickels? :dubious:
Launderer: Um… we separate all our coins and deposit them in different banks for… uh… liability purposes.
Bank: You know, that’s not really necessary. All accounts under a hundred thousand are protected by the FDIC.
Launderer: Look, I don’t tell you how to run your business so don’t tell me how to run mine. Just be glad we deposit our pennies somewhere else.