What the heck IS a plugged nickel anyway?
A. Plugs are the holes made in coins to extract some metal which can be used for other purposes. Coins so tampered with are no longer legal tender. Nickels being coins of small denomination lend themselves for use in this phrase. Essentially, the term means “worthless”. Basically, there’s two origion theories. One is that these coins became plugged when the cost of silver increased. People hollowed out their nickels (then made of silver) and filled them with a lesser metal, then sold the silver. The second theory is that the term came from the Wild West, when cocky cowboys would prove their stuff by tossing nickels into the air and seeing if they could shoot a hole or dent into them, IE plugged. That would also explain how the term plugged came to describe an individual who had been shot. Of course, unlike the hollowed out explination, these nickels were most likely still used in commerce… as who is going to argue when a gunman pays for his lodgings with a fist full of plugged nickel
