<< <i>if you melted them down yourself, how would they know????? >>
I'm guessing they wouldn't know. But I'm also guessing most people couldn't melt them down themselves. First, you'd have to get a heat source up to the melting point of copper, zinc, and nickel. Then, you'd have to separate them into their constituent parts.
If you haven't noticed, I'm single and miserable and I've got four albums of bitching about it that I would offer as proof.
Oh my goodness me! No melting of pennies and nickels. Why, I had planned to melt nickels and pennies and strike them into bullion coins in small denominations like...... nickels and pennies.
It is hard to believe (well, I guess not REALLY) that the legislators elected by our amazingly sharp populace can actually sit down, draw pay, and come up with a new LAW that affects.......nothing.
Command HQ to SWAT....Command HQ to SWAT..... Surround building. I want snipers at the corners. Fitzgerald, take your team and ram the door. Washington, your team cover rear.
Oh hell, it's the press!
Go go go go go go. GO NOW!!! These are penny melters. TAKE THEM OUT!!! GO!
<< <i>For a mom & pop store, eliminating the nickel and cent probably wouldn't mean much. But if you're Walmart, Target, Kmart, etc., you'd end up losing out big-time. All of that rounding up or down is real money, and over millions of purchases, it affects the bottom line. You could end up either a) not having as high a purchase price and losing money that way, or b) charging more for an item bought in bulk, and losing money that way.
As much as I hate to say it, the cent and nickel have their uses at least as placeholders, and aren't going away until we go 100% electronic with our money. >>
No. Walmart loses many more millions making change with worthless pennies than the corner store. The typical ma and pa store experiences pennies as a mere nuisance most of the time. It's rare that the line gets held up by them enough that people walk out. At the end of the day they can toss the excess in the trash or send them in with the receipts if they want to count them. Their loss is minimal. Walmart doesn't have the luxury of not dealing with pennies. The books have to balance and if a line gets slowed they have to open another. Very busy stores are being constantly slowed by the handling of these coins.
So who benefits the most by getting rid of pennies? It is really all of us since it impacts everything from land- fills, to health, to the smoothing of cash transactions. It saves the huge numbers of manyears required to count this garbage and haul it around in Brinks trucks.
And the nickel is a much bigger problem than you're looking at. There are billions of dollars worth of either dimes or quarters that become obsolete the day the nickel is not available. You simply can't make change to the nickel without having the five cent coin. If you buy a 95c item what change do you get back?
Sure the nickel is nearly worthless except that it's needed to use the huge investment we've already made in the production of dimes and quarters.
<< <i>For a mom & pop store, eliminating the nickel and cent probably wouldn't mean much. But if you're Walmart, Target, Kmart, etc., you'd end up losing out big-time. All of that rounding up or down is real money, and over millions of purchases, it affects the bottom line. You could end up either a) not having as high a purchase price and losing money that way, or b) charging more for an item bought in bulk, and losing money that way.
As much as I hate to say it, the cent and nickel have their uses at least as placeholders, and aren't going away until we go 100% electronic with our money. >>
So they raise the price of some items they sell by four cents. I mean, this is not a reasonable difference in money to even be concerned about.
<< <I>So why doesn't the mint change the composition of the two coins to put production costs back in line and save the tax payers some $$$.</I> >>
Isn't there also an issue with the vending industry? You chance the material coins are made out of, all those coke machines and such won't accept the new coins.
<< <i>More of our liberties stripped away by the current regime
CG >>
Yea. It's all Bush's fault.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
This is the best thread in a long time. Very interesting and not Internet board drama driven. And to think I recently turned in a small suitcase filled to capacity with pennies, err, I mean cents, to my bank to get cash to spend on other coins. Should have maybe hoarded those dirty slugs.
While everyone here immediately gets their panties in a bunch over this announcement, I think virtually all who have replied here have completely ignored the intent of the law. By putting out this "ban", the US Mint is trying to stop LARGE SCALE OPERATIONS from setting up shop hoarding pennies and nickels and melting them down. They don't want to see CoinStar taking all the pennies and coins and removing them from circulation. As to how this affects the general public? It doesn't. It just pisses off those who planned on making a living by melting down pennies and nickels.
The Mint could care less if Joe Shmoe melts coins. The Mint cares a TON about people setting up a business where they simply remove coins from circulation and make a profit off of it. I agree with the mint 100% on all of this.
I collect the elements on the periodic table, and some coins. I have a complete Roosevelt set, and am putting together a set of coins from 1880.
<< <i>While everyone here immediately gets their panties in a bunch over this announcement, I think virtually all who have replied here have completely ignored the intent of the law. By putting out this "ban", the US Mint is trying to stop LARGE SCALE OPERATIONS from setting up shop hoarding pennies and nickels and melting them down. They don't want to see CoinStar taking all the pennies and coins and removing them from circulation. As to how this affects the general public? It doesn't. It just pisses off those who planned on making a living by melting down pennies and nickels.
The Mint could care less if Joe Shmoe melts coins. The Mint cares a TON about people setting up a business where they simply remove coins from circulation and make a profit off of it. I agree with the mint 100% on all of this. >>
No, it doesn't affect the general public except to lower the price we can get for our coins. This isn't a big deal to anyone really since few members of the general public have hundreds of pounds of pennies just waiting for a good offer. But it does open the door to further restrictions and more importantly it drives the profit from the melt- ing of these coins away from the public and into the hands of a few. Some of these few will be caught and imprisoned and we'll ante up about $50,000 per year per man to keep them while we turn more murderers loose for lack of space.
If there were only a point to all this it wouldn't be hard to support. But it's just to sup- port a status quo which is already pointless and counterproductive. It is instituted to cover up the error of not doing something earlier. Indeed, they have barely hinted that anything is planned to fix the real problem. So we get bandaids on a leaking dam. Band- aids that will result in further costs and no solutions.
Nickels could disappear from circulation almost overnight. This is the point people keep ignoring. Almost anything could trigger it from a melting ban to a soaring of copper or nickel prices. The LME was recently in technical default on the nickel contracts. If pro- ducers come up short there could be a dominoe effect to business because of just in time delivery which is typical now in industry. Will this mean recession or rationing? Are we going to enter a planned economy where only the insiders and what government feels are critical users are allowed raw materials?
It's not so frightening when India restricts the ability of people to use property but this is the U.S. Give us some information about solutions to these problems which don't lead to a world where all coins and other property are considered to be at the disposal of government first, last, and always. Tell us who made the errors that led to this mess. Please tell us someone is working on a real solution and that it will be implemented on an emergency basis.
<< <i>For a mom & pop store, eliminating the nickel and cent probably wouldn't mean much. But if you're Walmart, Target, Kmart, etc., you'd end up losing out big-time. All of that rounding up or down is real money, and over millions of purchases, it affects the bottom line. You could end up either a) not having as high a purchase price and losing money that way, or b) charging more for an item bought in bulk, and losing money that way.
As much as I hate to say it, the cent and nickel have their uses at least as placeholders, and aren't going away until we go 100% electronic with our money. >>
No. Walmart loses many more millions making change with worthless pennies than the corner store. The typical ma and pa store experiences pennies as a mere nuisance most of the time. It's rare that the line gets held up by them enough that people walk out. At the end of the day they can toss the excess in the trash or send them in with the receipts if they want to count them. Their loss is minimal. Walmart doesn't have the luxury of not dealing with pennies. The books have to balance and if a line gets slowed they have to open another. Very busy stores are being constantly slowed by the handling of these coins.
So who benefits the most by getting rid of pennies? It is really all of us since it impacts everything from land- fills, to health, to the smoothing of cash transactions. It saves the huge numbers of manyears required to count this garbage and haul it around in Brinks trucks.
And the nickel is a much bigger problem than you're looking at. There are billions of dollars worth of either dimes or quarters that become obsolete the day the nickel is not available. You simply can't make change to the nickel without having the five cent coin. If you buy a 95c item what change do you get back?
Sure the nickel is nearly worthless except that it's needed to use the huge investment we've already made in the production of dimes and quarters. >>
Here's where what you're saying doesn't make sense to me: If Wal-Mart, Kmart, et. al wanted the elimination of the cent or nickel, wouldn't it already have happened? How does something like that get a pass by Big Business? Wouldn't there be a clamor to eliminate these things, and wouldn't the clamor be from the exact people who normally get listened to?
If you haven't noticed, I'm single and miserable and I've got four albums of bitching about it that I would offer as proof.
The lobbyists for the copper, nickel, and zinc mining interests so far have done about as good a job of keeping small change,
as the lobbyists for the folks who supply currency paper have done keeping the one dollar bill
in my view, all of this recent change to our coins and currency is a prelude to a full scale overhaul of our money (and a long overdue one)
just a matter of when common sense prevails over the special interests. first, get the public used to the idea that our money may change appearance....
Here's where what you're saying doesn't make sense to me: If Wal-Mart, Kmart, et. al wanted the elimination of the cent or nickel, wouldn't it already have happened? How does something like that get a pass by Big Business? Wouldn't there be a clamor to eliminate these things, and wouldn't the clamor be from the exact people who normally get listened to? >>
...excellent point.
As Baley says there is great vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
Perhaps though another reason big business hasn't been screaming is mere inertia. There have been some businesses which say they would just round transactions down to the nearest nickel except they still wouldn't be allowed to refuse pennies.
Yes, it is a matter of special interests wanting to maintain their hostage situation for metal or "paper" for the BEP. The 95c or 99c change issue has zero merit. We don't need such pricing. If that is maintained, it is just the same as the .9c on gasoline prices. There is no reason not to transition to prices graduated in tenths of dollars with no further resolution. As for sales taxes, they are already rounded and statistically average out. Furthermore, most locations do not tax foodstuffs and the unit price of taxable items are generally high enough that there is not problem with continual one dime round ups. We need to shed the cent and the five cent with the quarter going their way naturally. Just resize the half dollar (and coin $1, $2/$5, and maybe $10) and get things properly realigned painlessly. We should sdo it now, but ending it all in 2010 after the state quarters and Lincoln cent centennial is probably quite appropriate.
<< <i>...but ending it all in 2010 after the state quarters and Lincoln cent centennial is probably quite appropriate. >>
I basically agree with your points except for this. The economy has been suppressed for years by the lack of currency. Electronic transactions have eased much of the burden for most larger retailers but has done little for the purveyors of low-priced items and vending machine operators.
Cents can be made for mint sets in 2009 or until 2009. They can mint an interim 5c coin until a long term change is made to eliminate the dime or quarter.
Something needs to be done immediately (six months ago) about the nickel.
<< <i>Electronic transactions have eased much of the burden for most larger retailers but has done little for the purveyors of low-priced items and vending machine operators. >>
There are already vending machines on the market that take coin, paper money and plastic cards. It's only a matter of time until they all do.
#1. Already suggested in other threads--> Stop the cent and keep making the coin, only call it a nickel and stamp it FIVE CENTS. Take the current FIVE CENT coin and stamp the letters TEN CENTS on it etc
*POOF*
The Mint returns to profitability and inflation continues its merry way.
Old coins are retired as they are turned in to the Federal Reserve system.
BTW: When we have a government that is running deficits, inflation is a GOOD thing. Everyone holding tangible assets, like REAL ESTATE, feels richer. People who owe money end up paying back money that is worth less, so they are better off as long as their pay keeps inflating as well. The dollar assets we sell to foreign governments lose value. The Fed thinks a small amount of "controlled" inflation is acceptable. The coinage of our great country will soon be forced to reflect this change. I am upset the Mint feels so threatened they must take this sort of action but clearly something needs to be done.
I'll agree with others here. The Mint doesn't want and commerce would suffer if Billy's Melt shop opened up and began removing large numbers of coins from circulation. I do plan on writing the Mint and my Senator and Congressman about this. Not quite sure what I'll say but action IS called for.
My favorite, albeit impractical, idea in all this is to bring back the half-dime in clad form. The reduced metal content of the little coin would make it profitable at five cent apiece.
Cents, however, are a lost cause. Short of making them out of even flimsier and cheaper metals, there's just no way to produce a metal disc 19mm in diameter for under a penny. Let it run to 2009, and then kill it.
"Nickel for delivery in three months gained $1,500, or 4.5 percent, to $34,750 a metric ton on the London Metal Exchange. Earlier, the metal used in stainless steel rose to $34,875 a ton, topping the previous 19-year high set on Dec. 5 by $374. "
This was today's action. The 4.5% gain has taken it levels not seen in years. If memory serves nickel topped out at nearly $18 /lb in 1988. Zinc has been holding at highs and copper at short term lows. Nickel has tripled in less than a year. Inco, the big Canadian producer, has been sold.
Time to discontinue the cent for circulation and switch to nickel-plated steel for the 5c coin. Vending machines already have the programming to accept Canadian nickel-plated steel, so all they hafta do is just turn the machines on to accept here in the States. Our vending machines at work take both already.
<< <i>My favorite, albeit impractical, idea in all this is to bring back the half-dime in clad form. The reduced metal content of the little coin would make it profitable at five cent apiece.
Cents, however, are a lost cause. Short of making them out of even flimsier and cheaper metals, there's just no way to produce a metal disc 19mm in diameter for under a penny. Let it run to 2009, and then kill it. >>
Wow, Flaminio, bringing back the half dime in clad form would be big news for Cladiator, Barndog and MrHalfDime! They would now be collecting something newer than 133 years old!
You are correct about cents. Let's celebrate the 2009 centennial of the Lincoln cent and then eliminate the denomination. It's not worth anything, there are even boxes of them by cash registers, that's how little they're worth.
An authorized PCGS dealer, and a contributor to the Red Book.
<< <i>Wow, Flaminio, bringing back the half dime in clad form would be big news for Cladiator, Barndog and MrHalfDime! They would now be collecting something newer than 133 years old! >>
Damn Tootin! If they made a modern day half dime I'd be all over it!!
<< <i>Time to discontinue the cent for circulation and switch to nickel-plated steel for the 5c coin. Vending machines already have the programming to accept Canadian nickel-plated steel, so all they hafta do is just turn the machines on to accept here in the States. Our vending machines at work take both already. >>
Agree. You're suggestion makes a lot of cents.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
To those who say the value is too miniscule to profit, I offer the following: A one cent pre-1982 copper penny contains 2.2 cents worth of copper (and rising). That's $2.20 for every $1.00 spent. That's more than double your money. That's $220 for every $100. Think back to the early 1970's when fifty cent pieces 40% became slightly more valuable than their face value. People hoarded those by the truckload and melted them down when silver hit $50 an ounce. Today, those 40% halves are worth 4x face and are still hoarded as bullion. So the copper cents today are worth 2.2x face, but that is going to go up as the fiat dollar falls, and the one sure thing about our dollar is that it is always falling. By the time the penny is worth 5x face, you won't be able to hoard them in any quantity then, because people will have already done it for you. If you're going to hoard them, NOW IS THE TIME. They're available. Go to the bank and in every 50 coin roll you're bound to find at least 5 copper cents. That's a good deal. Is your time worth it? Maybe, maybe not. But I don't think 50 cents take up that much more space than 1 half dollar. So the notion that it would take up too much space or be too heavy to hoard cents as opposed to half dollars doesn't really have much merit. At one point, I had $1000 in cents saved up. It was a huge hoard, but it wasn't as huge as you might think. It would easily fit in a medium sized trunk. In copper melt alone, those would be worth $2200. And that's now--what about in 10 years? Of course, now it's illegal to melt them. We see the money manipulators panicking just as they did in the 30's and the 60's. Their regime is about the crumble from beneath them.
There's only good news here. Because if nobody melts them we can hoard them easier. And if everyone melts them, our hoards have collector value. What's to lose?
Basestealer, very few people knew that the 40% Silver Clad Kennedies even existed which is why there are so many still available. Everybody thinks silver stopped in US coinage in 1964.
As far as hoarding pre 1982 pennies, it only becomes economically viable if you have ton's of these to melt. Not dollars, worth or even hundreds of dollars worth but tons! Once you have tons, then you need someway of getting these to a melter that is willing to risk the wrath of the US Treasury for melting these babies down into ingots. If you can get that far, then you might show some profit at 2.2 cents for each penny.
Personally, I think you'd be better off waiting until each cent is worth a quarter in copper weight before you sell.
As with the 40% Silver clad Kennedies, very few people are even aware that the current value of copper has exceeded the cost of a cent. Heck, even more are unaware that the current cent is a copper plated zinc core!
I decided to change calling the bathroom the John and renamed it the Jim. I feel so much better saying I went to the Jim this morning.
<< <i>Heck, even more are unaware that the current cent is a copper plated zinc core! >>
Indeed. On the radio last night there was a story about the rising cost of copper, and how thieves were stealing copper piping and wiring out of homes. The radio guy then commented that copper had gotten so expensive that it costs the government more than one cent to make a penny.
Well, that's partly true -- it does cost more than one cent. But that's because of the rise in price of zinc. There's precious little copper in pennies, just enough to plate it red. Nickels, on the other hand, have a lot of copper, but no one seems to know this (save numismatists).
<< <i>No, the price of copper is moving well over 5.5% per annum. >>
There's still the storage issue. You need a lot of pre-82 pennies to make it worthwhile. It seems to me that there must be easier ways to bet on copper than pre-82 pennies.
damn the govt. i say! i tried melting my pennies, but they ended up all toned~ Do you think there is a "trusted" member of this board who can legitimately sell them? oh mel??
Comments
<< <i>if you melted them down yourself, how would they know????? >>
I'm guessing they wouldn't know. But I'm also guessing most people couldn't melt them down themselves. First, you'd have to get a heat source up to the melting point of copper, zinc, and nickel. Then, you'd have to separate them into their constituent parts.
-- Adam Duritz, of Counting Crows
My Ebay Auctions
It is hard to believe (well, I guess not REALLY) that the legislators elected by our amazingly sharp populace can actually sit down, draw pay, and come up with a new LAW that affects.......nothing.
<< <i>if you melted them down yourself, how would they know????? >>
I don't know what kind of market is out there for CU/NI bars.
NSDR - Life Member
SSDC - Life Member
ANA - Pay As I Go Member
Oh hell, it's the press!
Go go go go go go. GO NOW!!! These are penny melters. TAKE THEM OUT!!! GO!
Ha Ha
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
Jim
Menomonee Falls Wisconsin USA
http://www.pcgs.com/SetRegistr...dset.aspx?s=68269&ac=1">Musky 1861 Mint Set
<< <i>For a mom & pop store, eliminating the nickel and cent probably wouldn't mean much. But if you're Walmart, Target, Kmart, etc., you'd end up losing out big-time. All of that rounding up or down is real money, and over millions of purchases, it affects the bottom line. You could end up either a) not having as high a purchase price and losing money that way, or b) charging more for an item bought in bulk, and losing money that way.
As much as I hate to say it, the cent and nickel have their uses at least as placeholders, and aren't going away until we go 100% electronic with our money. >>
No. Walmart loses many more millions making change with worthless pennies than the corner store. The
typical ma and pa store experiences pennies as a mere nuisance most of the time. It's rare that the line
gets held up by them enough that people walk out. At the end of the day they can toss the excess in the
trash or send them in with the receipts if they want to count them. Their loss is minimal. Walmart doesn't
have the luxury of not dealing with pennies. The books have to balance and if a line gets slowed they have
to open another. Very busy stores are being constantly slowed by the handling of these coins.
So who benefits the most by getting rid of pennies? It is really all of us since it impacts everything from land-
fills, to health, to the smoothing of cash transactions. It saves the huge numbers of manyears required to
count this garbage and haul it around in Brinks trucks.
And the nickel is a much bigger problem than you're looking at. There are billions of dollars worth of either
dimes or quarters that become obsolete the day the nickel is not available. You simply can't make change
to the nickel without having the five cent coin. If you buy a 95c item what change do you get back?
Sure the nickel is nearly worthless except that it's needed to use the huge investment we've already made
in the production of dimes and quarters.
<< <i>For a mom & pop store, eliminating the nickel and cent probably wouldn't mean much. But if you're Walmart, Target, Kmart, etc., you'd end up losing out big-time. All of that rounding up or down is real money, and over millions of purchases, it affects the bottom line. You could end up either a) not having as high a purchase price and losing money that way, or b) charging more for an item bought in bulk, and losing money that way.
As much as I hate to say it, the cent and nickel have their uses at least as placeholders, and aren't going away until we go 100% electronic with our money. >>
So they raise the price of some items they sell by four cents. I mean, this is not a reasonable difference in money to even be concerned about.
US and British coin collector, and creator of The Ultimate Chuck E. Cheese's and Showbiz Pizza Place Token & Ticket Guide
<< <i>We started all this crap when we eliminated the half cent. >>
Yeah, how the heck do we make change for a penny these days!
NSDR - Life Member
SSDC - Life Member
ANA - Pay As I Go Member
<< <i>We started all this crap when we eliminated the half cent. >>
I'm still jammed that we never got around to minting mill coins. I feel I'm getting ripped for that tenth of a cent every time I fill up my gas tank.
Isn't there also an issue with the vending industry? You chance the material coins are made out of, all those coke machines and such won't accept the new coins.
<< <i>More of our liberties stripped away by the current regime
CG >>
Yea. It's all Bush's fault.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
The Mint could care less if Joe Shmoe melts coins. The Mint cares a TON about people setting up a business where they simply remove coins from circulation and make a profit off of it. I agree with the mint 100% on all of this.
<< <i>While everyone here immediately gets their panties in a bunch over this announcement, I think virtually all who have replied here have completely ignored the intent of the law. By putting out this "ban", the US Mint is trying to stop LARGE SCALE OPERATIONS from setting up shop hoarding pennies and nickels and melting them down. They don't want to see CoinStar taking all the pennies and coins and removing them from circulation. As to how this affects the general public? It doesn't. It just pisses off those who planned on making a living by melting down pennies and nickels.
The Mint could care less if Joe Shmoe melts coins. The Mint cares a TON about people setting up a business where they simply remove coins from circulation and make a profit off of it. I agree with the mint 100% on all of this. >>
No, it doesn't affect the general public except to lower the price we can get for our
coins. This isn't a big deal to anyone really since few members of the general public
have hundreds of pounds of pennies just waiting for a good offer. But it does open
the door to further restrictions and more importantly it drives the profit from the melt-
ing of these coins away from the public and into the hands of a few. Some of these
few will be caught and imprisoned and we'll ante up about $50,000 per year per man
to keep them while we turn more murderers loose for lack of space.
If there were only a point to all this it wouldn't be hard to support. But it's just to sup-
port a status quo which is already pointless and counterproductive. It is instituted to
cover up the error of not doing something earlier. Indeed, they have barely hinted that
anything is planned to fix the real problem. So we get bandaids on a leaking dam. Band-
aids that will result in further costs and no solutions.
Nickels could disappear from circulation almost overnight. This is the point people keep
ignoring. Almost anything could trigger it from a melting ban to a soaring of copper or
nickel prices. The LME was recently in technical default on the nickel contracts. If pro-
ducers come up short there could be a dominoe effect to business because of just in
time delivery which is typical now in industry. Will this mean recession or rationing? Are
we going to enter a planned economy where only the insiders and what government feels
are critical users are allowed raw materials?
It's not so frightening when India restricts the ability of people to use property but this
is the U.S. Give us some information about solutions to these problems which don't lead
to a world where all coins and other property are considered to be at the disposal of
government first, last, and always. Tell us who made the errors that led to this mess.
Please tell us someone is working on a real solution and that it will be implemented on
an emergency basis.
<< <i>
<< <i>For a mom & pop store, eliminating the nickel and cent probably wouldn't mean much. But if you're Walmart, Target, Kmart, etc., you'd end up losing out big-time. All of that rounding up or down is real money, and over millions of purchases, it affects the bottom line. You could end up either a) not having as high a purchase price and losing money that way, or b) charging more for an item bought in bulk, and losing money that way.
As much as I hate to say it, the cent and nickel have their uses at least as placeholders, and aren't going away until we go 100% electronic with our money. >>
No. Walmart loses many more millions making change with worthless pennies than the corner store. The
typical ma and pa store experiences pennies as a mere nuisance most of the time. It's rare that the line
gets held up by them enough that people walk out. At the end of the day they can toss the excess in the
trash or send them in with the receipts if they want to count them. Their loss is minimal. Walmart doesn't
have the luxury of not dealing with pennies. The books have to balance and if a line gets slowed they have
to open another. Very busy stores are being constantly slowed by the handling of these coins.
So who benefits the most by getting rid of pennies? It is really all of us since it impacts everything from land-
fills, to health, to the smoothing of cash transactions. It saves the huge numbers of manyears required to
count this garbage and haul it around in Brinks trucks.
And the nickel is a much bigger problem than you're looking at. There are billions of dollars worth of either
dimes or quarters that become obsolete the day the nickel is not available. You simply can't make change
to the nickel without having the five cent coin. If you buy a 95c item what change do you get back?
Sure the nickel is nearly worthless except that it's needed to use the huge investment we've already made
in the production of dimes and quarters. >>
Here's where what you're saying doesn't make sense to me: If Wal-Mart, Kmart, et. al wanted the elimination of the cent or nickel, wouldn't it already have happened? How does something like that get a pass by Big Business? Wouldn't there be a clamor to eliminate these things, and wouldn't the clamor be from the exact people who normally get listened to?
-- Adam Duritz, of Counting Crows
My Ebay Auctions
as the lobbyists for the folks who supply currency paper have done keeping the one dollar bill
in my view, all of this recent change to our coins and currency is a prelude to a full scale overhaul of our money (and a long overdue one)
just a matter of when common sense prevails over the special interests. first, get the public used to the idea that our money may change appearance....
THEN spring the real changes on them
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
<< <i>
Here's where what you're saying doesn't make sense to me: If Wal-Mart, Kmart, et. al wanted the elimination of the cent or nickel, wouldn't it already have happened? How does something like that get a pass by Big Business? Wouldn't there be a clamor to eliminate these things, and wouldn't the clamor be from the exact people who normally get listened to? >>
...excellent point.
As Baley says there is great vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
Perhaps though another reason big business hasn't been screaming is mere inertia. There have
been some businesses which say they would just round transactions down to the nearest nickel
except they still wouldn't be allowed to refuse pennies.
NSDR - Life Member
SSDC - Life Member
ANA - Pay As I Go Member
<< <i>...but ending it all in 2010 after the state quarters and Lincoln cent centennial is probably quite appropriate. >>
I basically agree with your points except for this. The economy has been suppressed for years
by the lack of currency. Electronic transactions have eased much of the burden for most larger
retailers but has done little for the purveyors of low-priced items and vending machine operators.
Cents can be made for mint sets in 2009 or until 2009. They can mint an interim 5c coin until a
long term change is made to eliminate the dime or quarter.
Something needs to be done immediately (six months ago) about the nickel.
<< <i>Electronic transactions have eased much of the burden for most larger
retailers but has done little for the purveyors of low-priced items and vending machine operators. >>
There are already vending machines on the market that take coin, paper money and plastic cards. It's only a matter of time until they all do.
#1. Already suggested in other threads--> Stop the cent and keep making the coin, only call it a nickel and stamp it FIVE CENTS. Take the current FIVE CENT coin and stamp the letters TEN CENTS on it etc
*POOF*
The Mint returns to profitability and inflation continues its merry way.
Old coins are retired as they are turned in to the Federal Reserve system.
BTW: When we have a government that is running deficits, inflation is a GOOD thing. Everyone holding tangible assets, like REAL ESTATE,
feels richer. People who owe money end up paying back money that is worth less, so they are better off as long as their pay keeps inflating as well. The dollar assets we sell to foreign governments lose value. The Fed thinks a small amount of "controlled" inflation is acceptable. The coinage of our great country will soon be forced to reflect this change. I am upset the Mint feels so threatened they must take this sort of action but clearly something needs to be done.
I'll agree with others here. The Mint doesn't want and commerce would suffer if Billy's Melt shop opened up and began removing large numbers of coins from circulation. I do plan on writing the Mint and my Senator and Congressman about this. Not quite sure what I'll say but action IS called for.
<< <i>
<< <i>Which will only encourage others who haven't considered this to start hoarding. This could get interesting. >>
Newb, you beat me to the punch. That was my first thought upon reading the thread title. I guess great minds think alike.
Damn....deeply insightful genius is such a rarity these days...
Cents, however, are a lost cause. Short of making them out of even flimsier and cheaper metals, there's just no way to produce a metal disc 19mm in diameter for under a penny. Let it run to 2009, and then kill it.
From Bloomberg.com.
This was today's action. The 4.5% gain has taken it levels not seen in years. If memory serves
nickel topped out at nearly $18 /lb in 1988. Zinc has been holding at highs and copper at short
term lows. Nickel has tripled in less than a year. Inco, the big Canadian producer, has been sold.
Curiouser and curiouser.
Typical U.S. Government. A sudden awakening with a knee-jerk reaction to something that's been brewing for years.
Great transactions with oih82w8, JasonGaming, Moose1913.
<< <i>My favorite, albeit impractical, idea in all this is to bring back the half-dime in clad form. The reduced metal content of the little coin would make it profitable at five cent apiece.
Cents, however, are a lost cause. Short of making them out of even flimsier and cheaper metals, there's just no way to produce a metal disc 19mm in diameter for under a penny. Let it run to 2009, and then kill it. >>
Wow, Flaminio, bringing back the half dime in clad form would be big news for Cladiator, Barndog and MrHalfDime! They would now be collecting something newer than 133 years old!
You are correct about cents. Let's celebrate the 2009 centennial of the Lincoln cent and then eliminate the denomination. It's not worth anything, there are even boxes of them by cash registers, that's how little they're worth.
An authorized PCGS dealer, and a contributor to the Red Book.
<< <i>Wow, Flaminio, bringing back the half dime in clad form would be big news for Cladiator, Barndog and MrHalfDime! They would now be collecting something newer than 133 years old! >>
Damn Tootin! If they made a modern day half dime I'd be all over it!!
<< <i>Time to discontinue the cent for circulation and switch to nickel-plated steel for the 5c coin. Vending machines already have the programming to accept Canadian nickel-plated steel, so all they hafta do is just turn the machines on to accept here in the States. Our vending machines at work take both already. >>
Agree. You're suggestion makes a lot of cents.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
A one cent pre-1982 copper penny contains 2.2 cents worth of copper (and rising). That's $2.20 for every $1.00 spent. That's more than double your money. That's $220 for every $100. Think back to the early 1970's when fifty cent pieces 40% became slightly more valuable than their face value. People hoarded those by the truckload and melted them down when silver hit $50 an ounce. Today, those 40% halves are worth 4x face and are still hoarded as bullion. So the copper cents today are worth 2.2x face, but that is going to go up as the fiat dollar falls, and the one sure thing about our dollar is that it is always falling. By the time the penny is worth 5x face, you won't be able to hoard them in any quantity then, because people will have already done it for you. If you're going to hoard them, NOW IS THE TIME. They're available. Go to the bank and in every 50 coin roll you're bound to find at least 5 copper cents. That's a good deal. Is your time worth it? Maybe, maybe not. But I don't think 50 cents take up that much more space than 1 half dollar. So the notion that it would take up too much space or be too heavy to hoard cents as opposed to half dollars doesn't really have much merit. At one point, I had $1000 in cents saved up. It was a huge hoard, but it wasn't as huge as you might think. It would easily fit in a medium sized trunk. In copper melt alone, those would be worth $2200. And that's now--what about in 10 years? Of course, now it's illegal to melt them. We see the money manipulators panicking just as they did in the 30's and the 60's. Their regime is about the crumble from beneath them.
There's only good news here. Because if nobody melts them we can hoard them easier. And if everyone melts them, our hoards have collector value. What's to lose?
What's to lose? The space to store 'em and the 5.5% annual risk-free interest rate that isn't earned on the money sitting in pennies.
As far as hoarding pre 1982 pennies, it only becomes economically viable if you have ton's of these to melt. Not dollars, worth or even hundreds of dollars worth but tons!
Once you have tons, then you need someway of getting these to a melter that is willing to risk the wrath of the US Treasury for melting these babies down into ingots. If you can get that far, then you might show some profit at 2.2 cents for each penny.
Personally, I think you'd be better off waiting until each cent is worth a quarter in copper weight before you sell.
As with the 40% Silver clad Kennedies, very few people are even aware that the current value of copper has exceeded the cost of a cent. Heck, even more are unaware that the current cent is a copper plated zinc core!
The name is LEE!
<< <i>Heck, even more are unaware that the current cent is a copper plated zinc core! >>
Indeed. On the radio last night there was a story about the rising cost of copper, and how thieves were stealing copper piping and wiring out of homes. The radio guy then commented that copper had gotten so expensive that it costs the government more than one cent to make a penny.
Well, that's partly true -- it does cost more than one cent. But that's because of the rise in price of zinc. There's precious little copper in pennies, just enough to plate it red. Nickels, on the other hand, have a lot of copper, but no one seems to know this (save numismatists).
<< <i>What's to lose? The space to store 'em and the 5.5% annual risk-free interest rate that isn't earned on the money sitting in pennies. >>
No, the price of copper is moving well over 5.5% per annum.
<< <i>No, the price of copper is moving well over 5.5% per annum. >>
There's still the storage issue. You need a lot of pre-82 pennies to make it worthwhile. It seems to me that there must be easier ways to bet on copper than pre-82 pennies.
So far I have accumulated nearly 50 pounds.