<< <i>I'm guessing there's some cigar chomping bad guys that own zinc mines that are slipping congressmen $100,000 checks left and right. "Be a real shame if something happened to the penny, see!" >>
I think its more like some bad Congressmen telling the mine owners "slip me a couple $100,000 checks and ill keep my friends at the EPA out of your mine" ,,,, just sayin
<< <i>I vote NO. Lincoln cents are one of the most widely collected series of all time -- partly due to the fact that they are are a regular-issue circulating coin that people are familiar with. Non-regularly circulating issues like Kennedy halves and Sacagawea/Presidential dollars have a collector base too, but since those denominations aren't as readily available to the average person, it's much more of a niche market (lower demand and lower liquidity). I imagine the same thing would eventually happen if the Lincoln cent were withdrawn for circulation -- which would be BAD for dealers and collectors alike. Are you sure that's what you want? >>
we can't make circulating coinage decisions based solely upon the collector's desires. are you going to suggest that the half cent should have continued to be made so collector's wouldn't be hurt??? >>
Of course.
Coins are money not an investment or a collectible. Pennies aren't money but a stinking albatross tied around the neck of the American economy. Cut it away.
In the short run eliminating the cent would be good for cent collecting anyway since it would focus a lot of attention on them.
I believe rather than just the elimination of the cent, when our monetary system is adjusted, it will be a sweeping change... i.e. cent, dime, dollar etc. all at once. The 'big shock' will quickly fade and we will then go on as always. Cheers, RickO
<< <i>1. I totally agree with the Coinstar comment. I've never quite understood the laziness of some people. >>
What some refer to as "laziness" others refer to as convenience. Try to take buckets of your change to most banks or credit unions and you need to have an account for them to accept them. Some people believe that their time is worth more than the absurdly high percentage charged by Coinstar. I am, however, not one of them. My real beef with Coinstar is that I didn't think of it first!
Numismatist Ordinaire See http://www.doubledimes.com for a free online reference for US twenty-cent pieces
I think that's the best idea I've heard yet, though in its drive for profits, I think there'd be a lot of interest on the part of the mint to issue rolls.
<< <i>Views went from 500 to over 6000 in the last hour. Hopefully this video will take off. I'll ask if they can do one for the paper dollar. >>
Over 197K views 24 hours later. >>
302K views 24 hours later. Slowing down, but growing. (Somehow I think if this goes viral and is picked up by mainstream media it will be grabbed by some politician who is looking to get attention with a budget cutting dog and pony show. Then maybe it will gain traction- we will see).
Government can save about $40M/year not making pennies. Divide by 300M+ population and you get......pennies on the dollar per person.....about 13 of them.
In other words, $40M might sound like a lot, but in relative terms it isn't costing the population much to support the penny. Foreign aid and welfare fraud are other items thought to cost bazillions of dollars but don't, relatively speaking.
What costs real money is Social Security, Medicare, defense.......
<< <i>Government can save about $40M/year not making pennies. Divide by 300M+ population and you get......pennies on the dollar per person.....about 13 of them.
In other words, $40M might sound like a lot, but in relative terms it isn't costing the population much to support the penny. Foreign aid and welfare fraud are other items thought to cost bazillions of dollars but don't, relatively speaking.
What costs real money is Social Security, Medicare, defense....... >>
The relative contribution to the problem should not matter. If it makes no sense and is in any way wasteful, it should go. If this philosophy was inherent, waste overall would be easier to curb. Tolerating the penny leads to tolerating the waste in the big ticket items.
I guess I am saying fix the broken windows and the murder rate will drop.
<< <i>Government can save about $40M/year not making pennies. Divide by 300M+ population and you get......pennies on the dollar per person.....about 13 of them.
In other words, $40M might sound like a lot, but in relative terms it isn't costing the population much to support the penny. Foreign aid and welfare fraud are other items thought to cost bazillions of dollars but don't, relatively speaking.
What costs real money is Social Security, Medicare, defense....... >>
The relative contribution to the problem should not matter. If it makes no sense and is in any way wasteful, it should go. If this philosophy was inherent, waste overall would be easier to curb. Tolerating the penny leads to tolerating the waste in the big ticket items.
I guess I am saying fix the broken windows and the murder rate will drop. >>
<< <i>Government can save about $40M/year not making pennies. Divide by 300M+ population and you get......pennies on the dollar per person.....about 13 of them.
In other words, $40M might sound like a lot, but in relative terms it isn't costing the population much to support the penny. Foreign aid and welfare fraud are other items thought to cost bazillions of dollars but don't, relatively speaking.
What costs real money is Social Security, Medicare, defense....... >>
Wasting even small amounts of money is absurd.
But your figures are wrong. In normal years about half of US mint production is pennies. Much of their budget pays for itself or even returns a profit so what's left is largely going to make worth- less pennies.
The money wasted making pennies is far more than 13c each since much of the cost is slowing transactions and keeping our currency system broken. So long as the penny exists it will be much more difficult to introduce the dollar coins which would not only save even more money but stream- line our currency system and bring it into the 1970's.
The cost of recalling pennies for safe disposal could probably be paid for by the value of the toxic metal in most of them and the copper in some. It doesn't matter what this costs. If they can wear respirators to clean parks then we can afford to recall the pennies.
Let's just figure that they had no profits so all tghis cost was bourne by making coin for circulation. About 65% of production was worthless pennies in the last year for which figures are at hand (2002). This is seven billion dollars. Even after you subtract out lower metal costs and die costs for pennies it's still well over 6 1/2 billion dollars or about 60c per coin.
They made enough pennies that everyone could have 15 of them. ...or $10 each per- son and $30 per hosehold. For this cost we are saddled with a worthless piece of metal which we have to lug to the bank once or twice a year.
This cost is still insignificant compared to the cost of actually using these toxic slugs. Pennies are far more expensive than the apparent cost to produce and use because they have us and our currency (economy) mired in another century.
Talking about how little the waste is per household is ridiculous. Wasted millions or billions is wasted millions or billions. I don't care what the per capita is. Knock off wasting tons (probably literally) of money we don't have.
<< <i>Probably should of done it when they started making them out of poison in 1982. >>
I agree. 1974 should have been a wake up call. The cost of copper was soaring and there were plans and procedures in place to start making them out of aluminum. This even resulted in the 1974 small date cents since these were intended to be struck in aluminum. As the cost of making one cent coins approached a cent the price of copper suddenly plummeted and the plans were scrapped at the last moment. The mint then scrambled to retrieve the samples they had previously given to various individuals.
The argument could be made that even as early as 1969 the cent was becoming superfluous to making trades even. One cent or even 2 1/2 of them was simply so little money that it mat- tered little who got the "break" on the nickel.
But by 1979 inflation was running rampant. The penny had deteriorated to the point that it didn't buy anything longer. It could still be made "profitably" only because of accounting gimmicks like ignoring the mint's budget while calculating the cost. Many of the costs of making pennies was just shuffled off onto higher denomination coinage. At one point the mint was calculating that (disregarding metal cost) that a quarter took more than twenty times the cost of the cent. But copper prices were low and tradition and the status quo are strong. It's easy to see why there was no popular rush to abandon the penny just because it was obsolete.
But by 1982 there were a laundry list of reasons to get rid of it. Leaders are supposed to lead but rather than show us the penny was obsolete they instead chose to bow to special interests and pretend there wasn't even a change in the coin by candy coating poison. But this and their continued accounting tricks did get the "cost" back under a cent. Of course the penny was a drag by this time and many older people who didn't realize the penny was just very low grade landfill would tie up checkout lines as they counted out exact change or decided it was a good time to get rid of all those pennies. This is no longer such a problem since our old timers grew up when a penny was utterly worthless and before the time that they were a stinking albatross. No one counts out pennies to buy things now days and might incite a riot if they did. Many stores don't carry any products at all less than a few dollars.
I'd say the cent became worthless about 1975, less than worthless by '79, a drag by '82, and has been a stinking albatross since about '95.
for the last six or eight years it's been a joke that history will not understand the punchline. His- tory will be extremely unkind to us on this "coin". They will consider it symptomatic of a corrupt, greedy, and wasteful culture.
At this late stage the nickel is really obsolete as well.
Unfortunately we have many billions of dollars tied up in dimes and quarters which are incompatible with one another unless a five cent coin exists.
The cheapest solution is to simply make the nickel out of aluminum. Vending machines easily reject aluminum so these should not be an issue. If you don't have enough quarters or dollars to make a purchase odds are good nickels won't swing the difference anyway so this is a non issue. Vending companies might worry about the softness of aluminum causing many deformed nickels which disable their machines but the bottom line is as peo- ple start using using vending machines again they will quickly learn that nickels don't work in the machines.
Over time the five cent aluminum coin can be made a little smaller to save money for this insignificant coin. In the not distant future the dime and nickel will simply need to be eli- minated. With any foresight at all the cost of this can be minimized.
I think the cent should go the wy of the JFK and the Sacagawea... no more releases for general circulation but still available at a premium via the Mint for collectors, etc. That way they could once again make them in the old bronze composition, satisfying the "zinc whiners" and still make a buck selling them.
<< <i>Pretty remarkable that more than 75% of particpants here--staunch coin collectors all--would vote to kill the penny.
Hope you enjoyed the video. >>
...
"government is not reason, it is not eloquence-it is a force! like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." George Washington
I can't help but wonder how many voted no because the time to kill the penny was more than a generation ago.
They should have just announced in 1981 that pennies had become worthless so we would round transactions. Instead they spend countless millions of dollars to find a cheaper substitute and untold billions of dollars to pro- duce low grade landfill with which we soil our hands and from which we try to protect children and pets.
I was in Penn Station in New York last week. I kid you not, I watched as an apparent homeless man was walking through the terminal, removing pennies from his styrophome cup, tossing them on the floor as people rushed by. There was an odd 'ping'--definitely not a "ching"--that made me turn around and look.
I watched for a while, and the only person to pick one up was a little girl, maybe 6 years old, walking with her family.
eliminate and redo. Eliminate one decimal point (1/100th).
dime- leave as is
half- reeded edge 100% copper the size of the current nickel
dollar coin- leave it as is
These are three distinct sizes and colors. No mistaking. Eliminate the cent, nickel and paper dollar. I always hate the anti-coin dollar argument of "who wants to carry around a bunch of those in their pockets?" Well, first of all, the only people that really pack around wads of ones are usually heading to a strip club. Dollar coins will likely end up in cup holders in the car along with other change and get used in drive-thrus.
As a collector who started out with pennies in a Whitman folder, it's hard to say goodbye, but it's long overdue........
How's this for an option?.......... eliminate further PRODUCTION of pennies, but do not "OUTLAW" them. That way, the government will no longer waste our money and resources producing these anachronisms, but civilians will not have to go "cold-turkey" without them....... Instead, people will eventually make the decisions for themselves as to whether or not it's worthwhile to fish them out of drawers, carseats, etc & continue to spend them, and retailers will determine for themselves when it's time to stop charging items ending in 99 cents, etc, and round up to the nickel instead. I guess the gov't will have to get involved tax-wise to make sure ending totals get rounded to the nearest nickel, too.......
The one area where I would disagree with most of the other posters here is in NOT including them (OR the half dollar, for that matter) in any future Mint or Proof sets. Coins not intended for general circulation should NOT continue to be minted for any reason, as they no longer represent circulating coinage, just in mint or proof condition. At that point, they become just more NCLT's that I dislike. After all, what's to keep proof sets from also including the 2, 3, 20, etc cent pieces of the past as well?
Personally, I'm sick and tired of trying to maintain a collection of a coin like the half, where they either have to be cracked-out of mint or proof sets, or bought at high premiums from the Mint, with no other way of obtaining them from actual circulating production. At that point, they become like annoying "Franklin Mint Collectible" pieces to me vs keeping up with actual U.S. coinage production.......
...i think they'll stay around just as long as copper and zinc lobbyists send in their candidate support checks.
"government is not reason, it is not eloquence-it is a force! like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." George Washington
Comments
<< <i>I'm guessing there's some cigar chomping bad guys that own zinc mines that are slipping congressmen $100,000 checks left and right. "Be a real shame if something happened to the penny, see!" >>
I think its more like some bad Congressmen telling the mine owners "slip me a couple $100,000 checks and ill keep my friends at the EPA out of your mine" ,,,, just sayin
<< <i>
<< <i>I vote NO. Lincoln cents are one of the most widely collected series of all time -- partly due to the fact that they are are a regular-issue circulating coin that people are familiar with. Non-regularly circulating issues like Kennedy halves and Sacagawea/Presidential dollars have a collector base too, but since those denominations aren't as readily available to the average person, it's much more of a niche market (lower demand and lower liquidity). I imagine the same thing would eventually happen if the Lincoln cent were withdrawn for circulation -- which would be BAD for dealers and collectors alike. Are you sure that's what you want?
>>
we can't make circulating coinage decisions based solely upon the collector's desires.
are you going to suggest that the half cent should have continued to be made so collector's wouldn't be hurt??? >>
Of course.
Coins are money not an investment or a collectible. Pennies aren't money but a stinking albatross tied around the neck of the American economy. Cut it away.
In the short run eliminating the cent would be good for cent collecting anyway since it would focus a lot of attention on them.
<< <i>Views went from 500 to over 6000 in the last hour. Hopefully this video will take off. I'll ask if they can do one for the paper dollar. >>
Over 197K views 24 hours later.
<< <i>1. I totally agree with the Coinstar comment. I've never quite understood the laziness of some people. >>
What some refer to as "laziness" others refer to as convenience. Try to take buckets of your change to most banks or credit unions and you need to have an account for them to accept them. Some people believe that their time is worth more than the absurdly high percentage charged by Coinstar. I am, however, not one of them. My real beef with Coinstar is that I didn't think of it first!
See http://www.doubledimes.com for a free online reference for US twenty-cent pieces
<< <i>no, just severely wound it.
restrict mintages to mint sets and proof sets.
no rolls.
Oh Gawd the Flippers would go WiLd! >>
I think that's the best idea I've heard yet, though in its drive for profits, I think there'd be a lot of interest on the part of the mint to issue rolls.
You're right, flippers would go nuts!
<< <i>
<< <i>Views went from 500 to over 6000 in the last hour. Hopefully this video will take off. I'll ask if they can do one for the paper dollar. >>
Over 197K views 24 hours later. >>
302K views 24 hours later. Slowing down, but growing. (Somehow I think if this goes viral and is picked up by mainstream media it will be grabbed by some politician who is looking to get attention with a budget cutting dog and pony show. Then maybe it will gain traction- we will see).
In other words, $40M might sound like a lot, but in relative terms it isn't costing the population much to support the penny. Foreign aid and welfare fraud are other items thought to cost bazillions of dollars but don't, relatively speaking.
What costs real money is Social Security, Medicare, defense.......
<< <i>Government can save about $40M/year not making pennies. Divide by 300M+ population and you get......pennies on the dollar per person.....about 13 of them.
In other words, $40M might sound like a lot, but in relative terms it isn't costing the population much to support the penny. Foreign aid and welfare fraud are other items thought to cost bazillions of dollars but don't, relatively speaking.
What costs real money is Social Security, Medicare, defense....... >>
The relative contribution to the problem should not matter. If it makes no sense and is in any way wasteful, it should go. If this philosophy was inherent, waste overall would be easier to curb. Tolerating the penny leads to tolerating the waste in the big ticket items.
I guess I am saying fix the broken windows and the murder rate will drop.
<< <i>
<< <i>Government can save about $40M/year not making pennies. Divide by 300M+ population and you get......pennies on the dollar per person.....about 13 of them.
In other words, $40M might sound like a lot, but in relative terms it isn't costing the population much to support the penny. Foreign aid and welfare fraud are other items thought to cost bazillions of dollars but don't, relatively speaking.
What costs real money is Social Security, Medicare, defense....... >>
The relative contribution to the problem should not matter. If it makes no sense and is in any way wasteful, it should go. If this philosophy was inherent, waste overall would be easier to curb. Tolerating the penny leads to tolerating the waste in the big ticket items.
I guess I am saying fix the broken windows and the murder rate will drop. >>
Well said and true.
<< <i>Government can save about $40M/year not making pennies. Divide by 300M+ population and you get......pennies on the dollar per person.....about 13 of them.
In other words, $40M might sound like a lot, but in relative terms it isn't costing the population much to support the penny. Foreign aid and welfare fraud are other items thought to cost bazillions of dollars but don't, relatively speaking.
What costs real money is Social Security, Medicare, defense....... >>
Wasting even small amounts of money is absurd.
But your figures are wrong. In normal years about half of US mint production is pennies. Much
of their budget pays for itself or even returns a profit so what's left is largely going to make worth-
less pennies.
The money wasted making pennies is far more than 13c each since much of the cost is slowing
transactions and keeping our currency system broken. So long as the penny exists it will be much
more difficult to introduce the dollar coins which would not only save even more money but stream-
line our currency system and bring it into the 1970's.
The cost of recalling pennies for safe disposal could probably be paid for by the value of the toxic
metal in most of them and the copper in some. It doesn't matter what this costs. If they can wear
respirators to clean parks then we can afford to recall the pennies.
Let's just figure that they had no profits so all tghis cost was bourne by making coin
for circulation. About 65% of production was worthless pennies in the last year for
which figures are at hand (2002). This is seven billion dollars. Even after you subtract
out lower metal costs and die costs for pennies it's still well over 6 1/2 billion dollars
or about 60c per coin.
They made enough pennies that everyone could have 15 of them. ...or $10 each per-
son and $30 per hosehold. For this cost we are saddled with a worthless piece of
metal which we have to lug to the bank once or twice a year.
This cost is still insignificant compared to the cost of actually using these toxic slugs.
Pennies are far more expensive than the apparent cost to produce and use because
they have us and our currency (economy) mired in another century.
They hurt us in ways that aren't even visible.
Talking about how little the waste is per household is ridiculous. Wasted millions or billions is wasted millions or billions. I don't care what the per capita is.
Knock off wasting tons (probably literally) of money we don't have.
-Keith
<< <i>Probably should of done it when they started making them out of poison in 1982.
I agree. 1974 should have been a wake up call. The cost of copper was soaring and there
were plans and procedures in place to start making them out of aluminum. This even resulted
in the 1974 small date cents since these were intended to be struck in aluminum. As the cost
of making one cent coins approached a cent the price of copper suddenly plummeted and the
plans were scrapped at the last moment. The mint then scrambled to retrieve the samples they
had previously given to various individuals.
The argument could be made that even as early as 1969 the cent was becoming superfluous
to making trades even. One cent or even 2 1/2 of them was simply so little money that it mat-
tered little who got the "break" on the nickel.
But by 1979 inflation was running rampant. The penny had deteriorated to the point that it didn't
buy anything longer. It could still be made "profitably" only because of accounting gimmicks like
ignoring the mint's budget while calculating the cost. Many of the costs of making pennies was
just shuffled off onto higher denomination coinage. At one point the mint was calculating that
(disregarding metal cost) that a quarter took more than twenty times the cost of the cent. But
copper prices were low and tradition and the status quo are strong. It's easy to see why there
was no popular rush to abandon the penny just because it was obsolete.
But by 1982 there were a laundry list of reasons to get rid of it. Leaders are supposed to lead
but rather than show us the penny was obsolete they instead chose to bow to special interests
and pretend there wasn't even a change in the coin by candy coating poison. But this and their
continued accounting tricks did get the "cost" back under a cent. Of course the penny was a drag
by this time and many older people who didn't realize the penny was just very low grade landfill
would tie up checkout lines as they counted out exact change or decided it was a good time to
get rid of all those pennies. This is no longer such a problem since our old timers grew up when
a penny was utterly worthless and before the time that they were a stinking albatross. No one
counts out pennies to buy things now days and might incite a riot if they did. Many stores don't
carry any products at all less than a few dollars.
I'd say the cent became worthless about 1975, less than worthless by '79, a drag by '82, and has
been a stinking albatross since about '95.
for the last six or eight years it's been a joke that history will not understand the punchline. His-
tory will be extremely unkind to us on this "coin". They will consider it symptomatic of a corrupt,
greedy, and wasteful culture.
Unfortunately we have many billions of dollars tied up in dimes and quarters which are
incompatible with one another unless a five cent coin exists.
The cheapest solution is to simply make the nickel out of aluminum. Vending machines
easily reject aluminum so these should not be an issue. If you don't have enough quarters
or dollars to make a purchase odds are good nickels won't swing the difference anyway
so this is a non issue. Vending companies might worry about the softness of aluminum
causing many deformed nickels which disable their machines but the bottom line is as peo-
ple start using using vending machines again they will quickly learn that nickels don't work
in the machines.
Over time the five cent aluminum coin can be made a little smaller to save money for this
insignificant coin. In the not distant future the dime and nickel will simply need to be eli-
minated. With any foresight at all the cost of this can be minimized.
That way they could once again make them in the old bronze composition, satisfying the "zinc whiners" and still make a buck selling them.
RIP Mom- 1932-2012
Hope you enjoyed the video.
<< <i>Pretty remarkable that more than 75% of particpants here--staunch coin collectors all--would vote to kill the penny.
Hope you enjoyed the video. >>
...
They should have just announced in 1981 that pennies had become worthless so we would round transactions.
Instead they spend countless millions of dollars to find a cheaper substitute and untold billions of dollars to pro-
duce low grade landfill with which we soil our hands and from which we try to protect children and pets.
ttt
I watched for a while, and the only person to pick one up was a little girl, maybe 6 years old, walking with her family.
dime- leave as is
half- reeded edge 100% copper the size of the current nickel
dollar coin- leave it as is
These are three distinct sizes and colors. No mistaking. Eliminate the cent, nickel and paper dollar.
I always hate the anti-coin dollar argument of "who wants to carry around a bunch of those in their
pockets?" Well, first of all, the only people that really pack around wads of ones are usually heading
to a strip club. Dollar coins will likely end up in cup holders in the car along with other change and
get used in drive-thrus.
Positive BST Transactions (buyers and sellers): wondercoin, blu62vette, BAJJERFAN, privatecoin, blu62vette, AlanLastufka, privatecoin
#1 1951 Bowman Los Angeles Rams Team Set
#2 1980 Topps Los Angeles Rams Team Set
#8 (and climbing) 1972 Topps Los Angeles Rams Team Set
How's this for an option?.......... eliminate further PRODUCTION of pennies, but do not "OUTLAW" them. That way, the government will no longer waste our money and resources producing these anachronisms, but civilians will not have to go "cold-turkey" without them....... Instead, people will eventually make the decisions for themselves as to whether or not it's worthwhile to fish them out of drawers, carseats, etc & continue to spend them, and retailers will determine for themselves when it's time to stop charging items ending in 99 cents, etc, and round up to the nickel instead. I guess the gov't will have to get involved tax-wise to make sure ending totals get rounded to the nearest nickel, too.......
The one area where I would disagree with most of the other posters here is in NOT including them (OR the half dollar, for that matter) in any future Mint or Proof sets. Coins not intended for general circulation should NOT continue to be minted for any reason, as they no longer represent circulating coinage, just in mint or proof condition. At that point, they become just more NCLT's that I dislike. After all, what's to keep proof sets from also including the 2, 3, 20, etc cent pieces of the past as well?
Personally, I'm sick and tired of trying to maintain a collection of a coin like the half, where they either have to be cracked-out of mint or proof sets, or bought at high premiums from the Mint, with no other way of obtaining them from actual circulating production. At that point, they become like annoying "Franklin Mint Collectible" pieces to me vs keeping up with actual U.S. coinage production.......
Just my 2cents worth..............
- - Dave
<< <i> After all, what's to keep proof sets from also including the 2, 3, 20, etc cent pieces of the past as well.
- - Dave >>
Oh, love that idea! Just one year! Throw in a half cent as well, and the cent could be a flying eagle!
...i think they'll stay around just as long as copper and zinc lobbyists send in their candidate support checks.
to a strip club.
...hmmm... I never thought about how hard it would be to "tuck a buck" using a Prez or Sacagawea dollar...
RIP Mom- 1932-2012