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Who's for plastic coins?
topstuf
Posts: 14,803 ✭✭✭✭✭
Why not? What we got now is junk anyway so why carry the extra weight? Could use poker chips I guess, but those are "redeemable" so maybe they're illegal or something.
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Cher-Wood Forest Aviary
POTD - May 26, 2005
Collecting Morgans in Any Grade
But, hey! $19.00 for $7.60. A deal!
If you have wooden coins, you have the problem of breaking and burning.
If you have ceramic coins, you have the problem of breaking and shattering.
Metal is the only solution I see to physical coinage, but it's quickly getting to the point that the metal contect is approaching the value of the coin itself.
Another solution is to completey get rid of coins and bills, and instead, set up a nation wide credit/debit system (in fact, you'd have to use this, because the coins and bills would become non-useable). You still get payed, but instead of bills and coins, it's as credits in your bank. Still as dollars and cents, but there is no physical currency. You purchase things with a credit/debit card, with a nice security chip that includes your finger print. No charges for them. No monthly fees. No extra tax on them. Just a simple trade off.
Sure you can still collect coins, you just won'y pay for the coins with coins, just a simple bank transaction. The card could work with a 15-digit number. A 15 digit number gives 15! permutations, or, 1,307,674,368,000 unique numbers. Enough for every man, woman, and child on earth, 210 times over.
I'd go with it.
Great transactions with oih82w8, JasonGaming, Moose1913.
I'd love to be a fly on the wall at the mint when they start throwing new ideas around.....
Oh, and plastic coins sound like a terrible idea. If a country needs to resort to plastic coins, then it's time for a new money paradigm....
instead, plastic debit cards will someday make all currency obsolete.
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
<< <i>If you have plastic coins, you have the problem of melting. >>
Not necessarily. Plastics (or polymers) come in three different forms: Thermoplastics, Thermosets, and Elastomers.
Thermoplastics are materials like polyethylene or polypropylene. Yes, these material melt but only at temperatures way above normal conditions and in some cases extreme temperatures are necessary.
Thermosets are materials like Baekalite or Epoxy. These materials are chemically cross-linked and DO NOT MELT. You can try to burn them, but most of them will simply char.
Elastomers are materials like rubber. These are lightly cross-linked materials that in some cases can melt, but usually do not. Again, unless you were to expose it to fire, it would behave similarly to a car tire, your tennis shoes, a bowling ball, etc.
Honestly, I wouldn't have a problem with making cents out of plastic. A thermoset would make an ideal material if you ask me.
<< <i>If you have ceramic coins, you have the problem of breaking and shattering. >>
Ceramic would be a great idea in my opinion.
Although some ceramic materials are quite fragile (bone china), most are not. Some are, in fact, incredibly tough and could take repeated blows from a hammer. Keep in mind, rocks are a naturally forming ceramic material and you likely don't think of them as fragile.
Unlike metal metal coins, ceramic coins would never wear, tone, corrode, or bend.
PVC? A thing of the past.
Artificialy toning? What's that!
Tooling? Knock yourself out.
Manufacuturing would be a different problem, but ceramic coins would actually be pretty cool.
'Buy the plastic, not the plastic' ????
DPOTD-3
'Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery'
CU #3245 B.N.A. #428
Don
Uh-oh......what about pitching pennies? No range.
But on the other hand, it would make cheating the blind easier as they couldn't tell by weight or "clink" what you put in the cup.
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
Thomas Paine
<< <i>Why not? What we got now is junk anyway so why carry the extra weight? >>
We could do away with the extra weight by adopting aluminum for the lower denominations, like many countries have done since the end of WW2. And aluminum coins, though they are sometimes sneered at, look pretty nice in comparison to some of the alternatives. I think we should have gone with an aluminum cent in '82 instead of the zincs. After all, somebody was apparently thinkin' the same thing, back in 1974.
Aluminum would be no good. Have you checked the price at the recycler lately?
It is against government policy to allow private citizens to have money of INTRINSIC value.
Just no tellin what free people might end up doing if they had real money.