Six billion pennies missing

ajaan

Saw this on another site:

by Peter Stebbings, Daily Mail 24 April 2007

They lurk in the corners of handbags, down the back of sofas and in the glove compartments of cars behind the mints and the de-icer.

Nowadays they are worth so little that if we saw one on the pavement, we might not even bother to pick it up. Yet the great lost tribe of penny pieces, if collected together, would be worth an astonishing £65m - more than a pound for every person in Britain.

According to the Royal Mint, 6.5bn of them have gone missing from circulation since they were first issued on decimalisation in 1971. Of course, a large proportion of them reside in large bottles on pub counters, and in those amusement-arcade penny falls machines where they form huge tottering piles but never seem to fall out into the eager hands of waiting children.

A survey suggests, however, that £26m worth are lying in the gutter and elsewhere on the streets, waiting to be picked up, plus another £11m in handbags, £7.8m in cars and £5.9m under the cushions of settees. Together the lost pennies would weigh 22,000 tons, the same as a decent- sized Royal Navy battlecruiser.

The new penny piece came into circulation on February 15, 1971, when the system of pounds, shillings and pence was phased out. It was worth 2.4 old pennies but was much smaller than the coin whose name it took. The ½p and 2p coins also came into general circulation, though the tiny ½p was withdrawn at the end of 1984 because shopkeepers could not be bothered with it any more. Since September 1992 pennies have been made out of copperplated steel. Rising copper prices mean the metal in 1p is now actually worth 1.65p.

According to the Royal Mint, the lost pennies account for 38% of all those issued, suggesting that Britons no longer believe in the saying: 'Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves'. The average adult is said to admit to mislaying at least five pennies a week - the equivalent of about £2.60 a year - although quite how he or she would be aware of the fact is a mystery.

The research, based on where pennies tend to be found, was commissioned by the car maker Chevrolet, whose European arm was formerly known as Daewoo. Les Turton, of Chevrolet, said: 'In an expensive world it's surprising so much money is currently unaccounted for. If it's true that looking after the pennies looks after the pounds then hopefully we have helped to point people in the direction of Britain's lost millions. 'Now it's up to them to scour the streets and search their cars and sofas to find the cash.' Despite all the loose change lying redundant across the country, six in ten of the 1,200 respondents to the survey admitted they do not bother to pick up lost coppers. Londoners were the most cavalier, with only 25% stooping for fallen pennies. In the rest of the South East, and the South West, 44% could be bothered, just beating the Scots, on 43%.

laurentyvan

Tons of pennies, gone underground,
tons of pennies waiting to be found.
Tons of pennies, all in the round,
tons of pennies do indeed abound.

$50 million, just like leafs,
dropping from the billions of trees.
$50 million, numerous as fleas
in order to test your expertise.

Inexpensive coins
do lounge around
and will test your patience
by the pound.

ed for spl and scansion

SYRACUSIAN

If it's true that looking after the pennies looks after the pounds then hopefully we have helped to point people in the direction of Britain's lost millions. 'Now it's up to them to scour the streets and search their cars and sofas to find the cash.'


Oh really? I'll give him one euro if he manages to recover a 2 euro piece and a few other minors that I can see for the past 2 months, but cannot recover without totally removing the driver's seat from my car. Of course I can always fill up the car with water...

cladking

The attrition on worthless coins is staggering. The penny is worth 2c face value
but anyone worrying about amounts so tiny is not going to see the more important
values. In order to have real value you'd need at least 5P. Perhaps the saying
needs to be updated to account for inflation.

The simple fact that people are ignoring is that these coins do not survive indefinitely
in a sofa or a car. Sofas might last 15 years and cars ten but then the sofa goes to
landfill with the coins still in it. These do not survive long in the ground. The cars go
to recyclers and are melted down with the coins.

The US penny is worth half as much. It virtually evaporates on exposure to water or
if left in the ground. A one cent coin tossed in Niagra Falls can be completely eroded
in a few hours.

These coins aren't going to come back. The vast majority are already gone and those
that could be recovered aren't even worth the effort to bend over and pick up. As time
goes on and mintages increase the effect will be to increase the rate at which coins dis-
appear. It is primarily inflation driving this. Yes, some people in the US just throw their
change in the garbage but this is the exception rather than the rule. Many more people
though accumulate cents because they don't know what to do with them. In all proba-
bility large percentages of these will end up in landfill eventually. Most of these coins will
be melted when the government lifts the melting ban but in the meantime they will either
be hoarded intentionally or unintentionally because of the low value.

This is a vast amout of money just sitting idle. It earns no interest and pays no dividend.
The coins are a drag on our economies because they sit idle but woul;d be a larger drag
if they got used and people had to count and handle them.

One would think governments would wake up.

cladking

There are probably about 150 billion US one cent coins missing.

This would be a somewhat conservative estimate and doesn't include coins
in public possession which are likely to be recirculated.

ColinCMR

the last time i was in Britain i was surprised at how much change you could find littered on the ground

Aethelred

The now humble Penny has it's roots in the silver Denarius of ancient Rome. From there it became the Diner of Dark Age France and then the Penny of an England still divided into several small kingdoms. It remained a silver coin for the rest of the Middle Ages an dinto modern times. The first copper Penny was issued in 1797 at a mint powered by steam, these first copper Pennies were large and heavy, but were soon reduced in weight. In 1860 the Penny became a smaller bronze coin, which it remained unchanged, except for the bust of new kings and queens as old ones passed from the scene, until 1970. Today the Penny is a small, debased coin with little value, but it's history in over 2200 years old. How sad it would be in the Penny would cease to be minted after so long and rich a history!

farthing

BBC Article on the missing pence and the Royal Mint redesign of the humble coin.

wybrit

I have a whole bunch of those tiddlers from rolls.