When will non-federal coin distributors stop harvesting cents?
Creg
Posts: 986 ✭✭✭✭✭
I doubt anyone knows, but are there experiences or notions from the forum?
My concern is that day when Coinstar rejects them.
0
Comments
As soon as retail stops using them
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
With the cent being tossed in jars, buckets, ect over generational decades, I figure there's at least two full years of production totals that at some point enter the system. Imaging one five gallon bucket being exchanged. Not everyone who has such accumulations collects coins so simply hearing about their demise will cause it to happen. To my understanding, only the production has been suspended, not the use and acceptance. Which requires further legislation that is surely coming.
Before that, could there be a point where banks and Coinstar do not want to pay the collection, storage, and distribution costs without the participation of the Treasury?
once into the circulation stream, the federal reserve dealswith them
Seems like a text run to test the public's acceptance of life without coinage. In this case the cent. Using the argument that it is too costly to produce. If successful, all other coinage elimination will eventually follow.
Maybe. But the Treasury is not their customer, retail is. As long as there is demand, they will sell them.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
So, the harvesters (gradually) sell the unwanted acculmulated cents back to the Treasury?
And then they’re out of circulation forever?
I honestly have no idea what Treasury or retail are going to do. At some point, someone is going to pass consumer protection laws to deal with the demise of cents.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Nobody has said ANYTHING about retiring them from circulation, simply not making more.
Through 2022, the mint has made almost 94 BILLION of the Union Shield cents alone.
They'll simply exist, with slow losses due to damage and disposal (couches going to land fills). Until the heat death of the universe.
ANA 50+ year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
Author: 3rd Edition of the SampleSlabs book, https://sampleslabs.info/
I think retailers are very quickly going to start rounding. No business is going to want the expense of handling pennies at a premium that will probably become nearly 5c each anyway.
This is probably the logical thing to do... but that doesn't mean the country will quickly embrace it. The US has had an illogical connection to cents for years.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Is it correct to assume that the fees we pay to the banks to maintain an account and the difference between savings interest and loan interest bear that percentage of the cost of the distribution of cents?
In my personal experience, it’s already happening quite a bit anyway. Most convenience stores don’t care about a few pennies either direction.
Right, not when, nor how quickly, but the way they go out.
This is the direction I aimed at—
This is the sense I get—
At the end of the stream, right? Who is going to take them there if the cost of handling cents is prohibitive?
I seldom use cash and don’t often see others using cash. Non-cash transactions do not need to be rounded. I expect zero economic impact and temporary confusion only among the most ignorant.
That's where all y'all are wrong. "Deal with them" will be to simply leave them in vaults, dribbling them out as banks and other cash clients request them.
This is what has happened with the dollar coin backlog that dropped under 1 billion after the Fed stopped ordering / Mint stopped producing 100M of each design in 2012. With 754m in inventory and 22m consumed per quarter, that's a 8.5 year backlog, meaning 22 years after they stopped significant production.
https://www.npr.org/2011/06/28/137394348/-1-billion-that-nobody-wants
https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/coin_dollarcoin.htm
Finally, recovering usable zinc from returned coins is a difficult process...
https://www.britannica.com/technology/zinc-processing
ANA 50+ year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
Author: 3rd Edition of the SampleSlabs book, https://sampleslabs.info/
the mint considers recycleability when making composition recs.
i'm guessing zincolns can be recycled without much cost
I doubt it. The spot price for zinc is a little over $3000 per METRIC TON.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
They directly charge retailers. That's why CRH are a drag
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Everybody pays except the "hobbyist" who thinks it's free.
The banks pay the contracted coin terminal when they order coins through the Fed. And again when they deposit them,
The merchant pays the bank when they order coins or deposit them.
ANA 50+ year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
Author: 3rd Edition of the SampleSlabs book, https://sampleslabs.info/
Recently horse race tracks in Kentucky and New York started paying off the breakage to the nearest cent. Payoffs now include .01-.99. So looks like those establishments will still need the cents.
Every time a customer deposits a roll of cents ($.50) at a bank, the bank pays WELL over $1.00 in processing costs (transportation / roll cracking [biggest expense] / verification / wrapping). The bank would be better off putting customer wrapped cents in the dumpster!
I seriously doubt more than several billion coins will come back in and most of them will just flow backward in the pipeline. No one cares about pennies. A five gallon jug is a lot of work to become persona non grata at your bank. A lot of the pennies not yet in the garbage stream will be heaped into it for decades. But make no mistake about it; There will never be many nice attractive BU 1984-P cents going into trash because almost none were made and survivorship in remarkably low.
The coins going into the garbage in the coming decades will be the tired, tattered, and corroded garbage in circulation today in an even more highly degraded condition.
You're lucky. Where I live, I'll hand a twenty dollar bill over for a 19.02 purchase. I walk out with 98 cents jingling in my pocket. Makes me crazy......and.....it happens all the time !
Agreed. It drives me nuts when they think they are entitled to CRH at zero cost and complain when banks don't want to accommodate them.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Slightly off topic but somewhat relevant. Stopped at Sheetz yesterday for an early morning coffee and saw this on the door. Looks like they are already having trouble getting pennies.
RGDS!
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
BOOMIN!™
Wooooha! Did someone just say it's officially "TACO™" Tuesday????
and they are going to stop in 2026
the fed res must be hoarding
Think that give-a-penny-take-a-penny saucers will disappear?
I would assume so but then maybe the penny saucer will just become the nickel and dime saucer, at least until they decide to cancel that too. RGDS!
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
BOOMIN!™
Wooooha! Did someone just say it's officially "TACO™" Tuesday????
We made a stop in Southern WI this past week and the Kwik Trip gas stations have letters posted stating that with the USM no longer going to produce cents and Garda having supply issues they are no longer making change with cents and will round down. You must have exact change only. On another note, my local credit union quit ordering/selling boxes of halves for/to customers. I assume this is happening at most of the local banks, only to avoid the surge of silver searchers. No cents-no halves, what’s next?
on the extreme end: no cash
Spot-on requires few words.
The manager at Harris Teeter informed me that they cannot order cents from Wells Fargo through Loomis any longer. They currently are tweaking their software for the round-off.
Harvest Coins. That’s a great name for a coin shop.
``https://ebay.us/m/KxolR5
At the rate we're destroying the dollar, might as well round up to the dollar.
Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value. Zero. Voltaire. Ebay coinbowlllc
The half-cent was discontinued in 1857 due to having an impractically low value. The cent in those days had the purchasing power of $0.37 today. By the same logic, we should have already gotten rid of the nickel and dime, and very nearly the quarter.
The nickel, like the dime costs more to make than its value. Nickels these days are mostly copper, and cents are mostly zinc. So even smelters need to make a profit.
I believe it's illegal for private parties to melt them down. But the treasury can. I do know for sure that jewelers like to melt down Maple Leafs (Canadian silver and gold). We know there are billions of copper cents that could be melted down, now that copper prices are going up to the moon. That in my humble opinion would be good for collectors creating a permanent shortage.
Canada got rid of its penny and is getting along fine with the canadian nickel as the smallest coin. Rounding up to the nearest 5c makes sense. If you get rid of the nickel, then you have to eliminate the dime too, imho.
I doubt this is true. After the FED sucked up the last of the silver in mid-1969 they changed the law to allow them to melt it. I imagine they'll do the same for pennies and nickels in their time,.
My question...will they stop making the cent for uncirculated & proof sets ?
Exactly what do you doubt is true? It is in fact illegal to melt cents and nickels (except for war nickels). This has been discussed in the forums many times.
As for the government sorting out silver coins, there has apparently been a dearth of information about this subject, with some sleuthing in this thread from 2020 turning up bits of evidence that silver was pulled from coins in the Fed's inventory that were not being recirculated:
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/1037320/anybody-know-about-the-treasury-sorting-silver-coins-out-of-circulation-back-in-the-late-60s
What I am not aware of is any organized effort by the government to pull all silver out of circulation (other than from the Fed's non-recirculated inventory as mentioned in the above thread), or that it was illegal to melt silver coins. I'd love to see some citations on these subjects as the information does not seem to be readily available.
What I did not know but found details about was FDR's Executive Order 6814 issued in 1934 that required private citizens to turn in their silver holdings to the U.S. government. Coins of all types, in any quantity, were exempt (a huge difference from the gold restrictions). I'm not sure how many people were stacking silver bars back then - probably not many since silver was readily available in coin form. The order was revoked in 1938.
Looks like maybe will see a cashless society yet? Best wishes
Exactly what do you doubt is true? It is in fact illegal to melt cents and nickels (except for war nickels). This has been discussed in the forums many times.> @JBK said:
The government is not allowed to break the law. Don't forget even if they were allowed to break it they would still contract this work to smelters, refiners, steel mills and just about any company that melts metal. I have difficulty believing that they would issue exemptions or make sure each company wasn't also buying illegal cents.
The law is far too complex to apply it even more unevenly than it already is. They will simply change the law as soon as FED inventory gets too large not to. In this case it's very easy to change the law because Congress didn't write it, A bureaucrat did.
None of this is political. It is a reflection of ongoing processes and systems related to current modern coin!
.
My AI adds; “The law bends when the metal piles up. And coinage isn’t governed—it’s calibrated.”
I did update this thread.
Most coins in the modern era are recalled and melted all over the world. For example the old East German coins were recalled at par and destroyed to make toasters and refrigerators. The coins went from valueless to being as valuable as the Mark so large percentages of the few surviving coins were actually turned in. Even old tired 1950's era 10p coins were redeemed. There were no nice choice coins because few were saved and little escaped the roundup.
This same is nearly certain to happen to US coins. Where old coins weren't always recalled because inflation made the silver in them so valuable no one would redeem them. Same with copper and other coins, they had too much value to recall. This is why you can find so many ancients and very old coins in nice condition but finding a nice attractive AU 1950-E German 10p coin is virtually impossible.
A lot of coins made since WWII are highly elusive in Gem and/ or high grades. They were made in huge numbers and they have been destroyed.
.
My AI adds; "“Coins don’t vanish from circulation. They vanish from care. And velocity erases what neglect refuses to save.”
Your responses continue to make no sense to me. 🤔
I believe that the prohibition on melting cents and nickels is a ruling issued by the Secretary of the Treasury, not a law enacted by Congress. And the government routinely exempts itself from its own laws. You don't have to look any further than the destruction of defective coins from the mint. They are shipped out to be scrapped (legally).
And you've again suggested that it was illegal - even for the government - to melt silver coins until the law was changed. I am not aware of any such law and I'd appreciate more details on that.
As for a "too large" inventory of cents at the Fed, I personally doubt that there will be any such thing. They will fill orders as they come in, until inventory runs out. The cent is not being recalled or denonitized. Cents will go wherever they have been going all along, until banks (and the Fed) run out of inventory.
10p is 10 pence.
The pfennig is/was abbreviated as pf.
More like they want to close the San Francisco mint and sell it. The YIMBY movement there is huge.
I remember the road better than the signposts. Government now is melting coins that have been demonetized rather than breaking laws. The melters don't get exemptions to melt good coin. They are contracted to melt specific demonetized coin.
I don't recall. Removing valuable metal in circulation was certainly in the purview of the FED but melting them was not until the law changed. It was changed to allow everyone to melt. I believe it was the same law that enacted the date freeze in 1964 that banned melting of silver coin. This law was mostly superseded by the Coinage Act of 1965 but some of it remained in effect.
I don't know. I've been saying for many years that the government and everyone will be surprised how few coins come in for processing. It might be even fewer than my projections because I never imagined how much negative value pennies would obtain., THIS ISN'T POLITICAL. Pennies have had negative value for decades caused by the actions of ALL OF Congress and not one individual or party. We did it to ourselves.
Pennies are flowing out of the banks because most are going to stores and users who are not yet rounding. When they stop ordering cents there will be a very strong net inflow to banks and they aren't going to trash them. They are going to all go into alloy, entropy, and the garbage dumps. It won't take long because they fit with garbage so well and zincolns virtually evaporate in air.
.
My AI adds; _ "“The cent won’t be recalled. It will be forgotten. And in that forgetting, it will melt—not by decree, but by drift.”_