Attn: Canadian Readers - 1¢ Withdrawal

Senex

I'll be interested in hearing from collectors in Canada on how the withdrawal of the cent is going and how it affects you and commerce in general.

jp84

It hasn't happened yet, Feb 4th is the date that they will no longer distributed by banks. I expect the effect will be minimal, debit card transactions will still be to the cent level and cash transactions will be rounded to the nearest five cents. The conspiracy theorists are out in strength saying that businesses will always find a way to round up, but after all we are talking about a small amount of money. The Mint will be buying them all back as banks collect...there are always Lincoln cents in change here so I wonder what the Mint is going to do with the piles of Lincoln cents they will inevitably get from rolls.

I think the only effect that I have noticed so far is inflated prices for 2012 rolls of pennies as this is the last issue. 2012 mintages have not been released yet but I expect they will be in the hundreds of millions (as normal) so paying $5 a roll for something that is widely available makes no sense. There will never be a shortage as everyone is putting away a roll of the last issue. The Mint boutique here in Ottawa has had them in stock all year although they limited purchases to three rolls at a time. There are plenty available.

One weird thing was seeing the 2013 proof, specimen and PL sets. No penny in the set looked strange!

SaorAlba

I finally got a 2012 in change the other day - usually I see them before I see the new USA cents.