Peter Schiff wants investors to buy nickels instead of US Treasury Bonds. He argues the copper and nickel inside each coin now outvalue the bond market.
The economist put the melt value at 7.76 cents, about 55% above face value. However, federal law bans melting the coins at all.
Peter Schiff’s Unconventional Nickel Math
Copper price closed Tuesday at $6.69 a pound on COMEX, just below its August record. Nickel settled at $16,776 a tonne. Each coin carries 3.75 grams of copper and 1.25 grams of nickel.
Those prices value the metal at 7.63 cents, roughly 53% above face value. Schiff’s number therefore lands close to the mark. The metal also set a fresh record in London on Tuesday, as traders braced for US tariffs on refined copper.
His supply warning also holds. The Mint spent 13.31 cents to produce and ship each nickel in fiscal 2025. Each coin therefore costs taxpayers more than double its face value. The Mint struck the final circulating penny last November.
Federal Law Blocks the Melt Trade
The Peter Schiff nickels pitch then hits a legal wall. Replies to his post flagged the problem, and they are right. Regulation 31 CFR Part 82 bars melting or exporting five-cent and one-cent coins. Violators risk $10,000 fines and five years in prison.
Schiff waved the objection away.
You don’t have to melt them. They will hold their value.
Yet that answer skips the logistics. Each nickel weighs five grams. A $10,000 stack therefore weighs a full metric ton. Scale it to $100,000, and the buyer stores 10 tons of change.
Meanwhile, the 10-year Treasury paid 4.77% on Sept. 3 and needs no warehouse.
The pitch fits Schiff’s long-running case against Bitcoin and paper claims, sharpened by record US debt and rising yields.
So the premium is real on paper, yet locked inside metal nobody may legally melt. Whether the Mint retires the nickel next will decide if it ever pays.