If this has been addressed before on this forum please forgive me. Anyway, I have read many times so far on this forum that people wonder why they do not find that many nickels. After I read a few of these posts, I thought that I would share my thoughts.
The reason we don't find that many nickels is because we do not get that many any change and there are fewer to lose (provided that you don't disc them out).
If you think about it, whenever you make a purchase where coins are required as part of your change (change = xdollars + 1 cent to 99 cents), you will only receive a maximum of 1 nickel for all 99 scenarios (that is $x.01 through $x.99). You could receive a max of 3 quarters, a max of 2 dimes or a max of 4 pennies, but, you will only receive a max of 1 nickel. Of course this is provided that the cashier has an ample amount of change to provide the least amount of coins to make change.
If you do the math, you will find on average that you should see ~5 x as many pennies as nickels, 2 x as many dimes as nickels and ~3.75 x as many quarters than nickels.
Now with that said, in my very, very short time of detecting, I have found mostly pennies (~57% of my coin finds) and not as many quarters as I should have based on my logic above. This could be explained a few ways. 1) People, besides me, won't pick them up when they see them whereas they would pick up a nickel, dime or quarter 2) pennies, as well as dimes, are harder to see on the ground than quarters.
My two tabs, ust thought I would share for what it's worth - not much
Todd
The reason we don't find that many nickels is because we do not get that many any change and there are fewer to lose (provided that you don't disc them out).
If you think about it, whenever you make a purchase where coins are required as part of your change (change = xdollars + 1 cent to 99 cents), you will only receive a maximum of 1 nickel for all 99 scenarios (that is $x.01 through $x.99). You could receive a max of 3 quarters, a max of 2 dimes or a max of 4 pennies, but, you will only receive a max of 1 nickel. Of course this is provided that the cashier has an ample amount of change to provide the least amount of coins to make change.
If you do the math, you will find on average that you should see ~5 x as many pennies as nickels, 2 x as many dimes as nickels and ~3.75 x as many quarters than nickels.
Now with that said, in my very, very short time of detecting, I have found mostly pennies (~57% of my coin finds) and not as many quarters as I should have based on my logic above. This could be explained a few ways. 1) People, besides me, won't pick them up when they see them whereas they would pick up a nickel, dime or quarter 2) pennies, as well as dimes, are harder to see on the ground than quarters.
My two tabs, ust thought I would share for what it's worth - not much
Todd