The phrase "a nickel in a" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used in contexts where you are discussing a small amount of money or a specific situation involving a nickel.
Example: "I found a nickel in a strange place, tucked away in the corner of my drawer."
Alternatives: "a dime in a" or "a quarter in a".
"They'd just as soon die as stick a nickel in a juke box," a captain advises his men as they are about to hit "The Sands of Iwo Jima" (1949).
Comment on bureaucracy - a three-page form which must be filled out by a civilian employee at Fort Monmouth who lost a nickel in a vending machine and wishes to be reimbursed.
By William Walden and Russell Maloney The New Yorker, January 15 , 1944P. 13 Comment on bureaucracy - a three-page form which must be filled out by a civilian employee at Fort Monmouth who lost a nickel in a vending machine and wishes to be reimbursed.
He was alert to all the degrees of humiliation, from his own in 1934, passed on by a professor to the FBI ("Slovenly, a low-class Jew. He is not one of our type of boys"), to the loss of face suffered by a man who lost a nickel in a pinochle game.
A cowgirl dropped a nickel in a parking meter to hitch her pony.
Imagine the dude who refuses to chance even a nickel in a slot machine.
The new nano machine is fast: as a demonstration, Mirkin printed 55,000 images of a nickel in an area smaller than a dime and did it in less than half an hour.
As Brian Taves describes, "Many of the poorest theaters, such as the 'grind houses' in the larger cities, screened a continuous program emphasizing action with no specific schedule, sometimes offering six quickies for a nickel in an all-night show that changed daily".
A one-time popular stop in New York was the Horn and Hardart, a nickel-in-the-slot cafeteria.
Draconian choices could be avoided with just an increase of a nickel in the gas tax.
That seems an impressive outlay for a nickel in the Telephone Company's slot.
