Hannah Dreier, a remarkable AP correspondent in Caracas, reports that coins have become scarce in the region. Despite this, the Venezuelan mint claims it continues to produce coins (Excel sheet).
The following data outlines the quantity of coins in circulation over the last few years:
Thanks to the power of Excel, I managed to analyze this data to estimate the minimum number of coins that have been minted in the past two years, one year, and one month. (Keep in mind that this doesn’t account for any coins that were purposely removed from circulation, although that number is likely quite low.)
Coins:
| Change | 0.01 | 0.05 | 0.10 | 0.125 | 0.25 | 0.50 | 1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| April 13-April 15 | 2,651,534 | 729,845 | 38,756,047 | 2,031,396 | 104,434,773 | 215,540,440 | 256,012,268 |
| April 14-April 15 | 372,171 | 252,266 | 9,642,052 | 827,783 | 70,682,828 | 86,379,074 | 145,431,257 |
| March 15-April 15 | 10,503 | 6,078 | 361,085 | 22,032 | 2,757,111 | 471,734 | 8,346,286 |
Bills:
| 2 | 5 | 10 | 20 | 50 | 100 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 142,343,456 | 381,895,292 | 200,112,816 | 357,261,457 | 454,259,700 | 1,071,587,881 |
| April 14-April 15 | 32,524,953 | 186,575,559 | 21,878,334 | 186,130,523 | 195,628,489 | 723,924,363 |
| March 15-April 15 | 17,181,440 | 6,835,634 | -11,949,103 | 5,067,159 | 26,675,079 | 46,071,589 |
Hannah also inquires on Twitter where all the coins have vanished to. I suspect, as I pointed out a few years back, that they are being sold off as scrap metal, probably even before they leave the mint.
(The discussion was started by Tim Worstall, who penned a noteworthy article in Forbes about “reverse seigniorage,” but he oddly “predicted” that Venezuela would soon experience a coin shortage, a prophesy that has evidently already come true. Ah, good old Forbes.)
Additionally, it occurs to me that the ultimate scam would be for someone to purchase the coins at face value and then sell them back — to the mint! Hence the mint could keep issuing coins without utilizing the country’s precious electricity or disrupting people’s essential lunch breaks. Wouldn’t that be fantastic? Easy profits in every sense of the word. Who would even noticed?