Posted on 11/16/2007 9:04:06 PM PST by neverdem
If they're old enough, yes. Solid copper pennies -- those minted prior to some time around 1983 -- are worth more than 1¢ per as raw copper. I believe it's technically illegal to melt down US coins, but once they're melted and cast as ingots, who's to know?
That's why the Mint started making pennies out of copper-plated zinc in the early '80s. That led to my favorite high school chemistry class trick. Nitric acid dissolves copper but not zinc, and hydrochloric acid dissolves zinc but not copper (I think -- I might have it backward. It's been a long time).
Trick part 1: burn off the copper, and you have a silver-colored penny that is pretty much indistinguishable from an intact penny other than by color. You might be able to pass those off as rare WWII steel pennies, but I wasn't conspiring to commit fraud. I just thought it was neat.
Trick part 2: with a handy pocket knife, nail file, X-Acto, or the edge of a desk, make a notch in the edge of the penny so you can see the zinc. Dissolve the zinc, and you have a hollow copper shell barely thicker than crepe paper. Then you can hold it between your thumb and forefinger, showing your audience what appears to be a solid penny, and then crush it with nothing but finger pressure.
Took me a while to get tired of that one. Even though it only worked on freshmen and sophomores who hadn't taken chemistry yet.
I had a lot of fun in the chem lab. My lab partner (and best friend) and I usually finished our projects early, so in our spare time we each lined up eight test tubes in a rack and filled them with varying levels of water so, eventually, after a lot of tweaking and tuning, they formed a C Major scale when lightly tapped with a glass stirring rod. When we finished the project, we held a little recital for our classmates.
If Mrs. Strong, my chem teacher, didn't have a sense of humor, I probably wouldn't have graduated high school.
But I digress.
Yeah, because then they wouldn't merely be close to worthless, but they'd also wear out.
And the US is one of the few countries that's never done it. Once upon a time, a dollar would buy you a week's lodging at an inn, with meals. Recently enough that my dad can remember it, five bucks would feed a family of four at MacDonald's. Recently enough that I can remember it, a dollar would buy about 1.3 gallons of gas.
Inflation is a fact of life, and even if it's running at a fraction of a percent, that adds up over time, It's not an accident that the US dollar and the UK pound are the closest thing we've ever had to a global currency. Or that the dollar and the pound are the most counterfeited. They're trusted. They won't go away tomorrow. They're a piece of the rock. And while they might be worth less in the future, they'll never be worth nothing.
I don't think any sane person has ever said, "it's okay -- I've got a suitcase full of lira."
How finely do you want that mill to grind? For a large chunk of US history, the smallest unit of coin didn't have a terminal 1. It was a half-penny, with a terminal .5. Should we resume minting half-pennies? Mils? Nanocents? Where does the madness stop?
The copper-clad zinc pennies burn with a charming blue and green light wehn tossed onto the fireplace embers.
The copper-clad zinc pennies burn with a charming blue and green light wehn tossed onto the fireplace embers.
In essence, welfare is 500% inefficient.
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Sorry, some of us have trouble with the new insane math expressions, could you please use an expression that makes sense?
So there a penny cost 2 cents to make. If the penny was the only currency that would be a problem, but it isn’t. If you are going to use that logic then what about the dollar bill, who much does it cost procduce a “dollar”. For the sake of argument, let us say it is 5 cents, which means there is a “profit” of 95 cents per dollar bill. But wait, there is more. What abou the 5 dollar bill. It would cost the same as a one dollar bill, so the profit is now $4.95. Step it up to the ten, twenty and fifty and the profits become obscene. So they lose 1 cent for every penny but they make it up on the bills.
Of course they would say there is no “profit” but then who gets the value of the “money” when new money is created? I am sure we have more “money” in circulaton today then we had say ten years ago. So since they are not just replacing worn bills, but creating new bills, who gets the “money”?
Raise the value of the penny to a dollar, give everyone a wheel barrow and let’s go shopping for sauerkraut and weinerschnitzel.
Touche'. I wrongly was expressing that it cost 83 cents to deliver 17 cents to a welfare recipient which is worse than using 2 cents to make a penny.
That is why I went to law school. There was no math on the entrance exam.
That is why I went to law school. There was no math on the entrance exam.
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I am sure you are good at math, it is just that you seem to have fallen into the same habit as others who use meaningless expressions like “5000 times smaller”, “300 percent less”, etc. For some reason this sort of thing drives me into a fit of despair. My high school math teachers would have recommended me to a good insane asylum if I had used such terms that are so common today.
— the same denominations as today, but worth ten times as much. That would make the cent worth what it was 60 years ago.
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In reality, I would say MAYBE forty years ago, certainly not sixty.
The Lincoln tophats floating across the bubbling surface might tip off the feds. :-)
Issuing new dollars, with a nominal value 10 times greater than today’s nominal values wouldn’t be devaluation. Devaluation usually refers to the deliberate lowering of the value of your country’s currency relative to another’s. Consider the recent changes in the relative value of the U.S. dollar against the Canadian dollar, or the Euro. Those changes are real, not just nominal.
I recognize that issuing “newbukz” wouldn’t be easy — that’s why I said that it wouldn’t occur any time soon. However, all that it would be doing is recognizing the effects of decades of inflation, and depreciation of the value of the dollar.
In Canada, we converted the dollar bill to a coin about 20 years ago, and more recently the two-dollar coin was issued. (BTW, a two dollar bill was a lot more convenient than you might imagine — in my lifetime it was worth what a twenty is today.) Now, there’s serious talk of a 5 dollar coin. In my father’s youth, 5 dollars was a good day’s pay — now, it’s about to be reduced to pocket change.
I love Office Space. It's a very real scheme that even has a name: "salami slicing". The idea is you just cut off a very thin "slice" of money repeatedly and it adds up.
That’s interesting about $5 per day being a good days pay at one time. It reminds me of the “Stick up for breakfast” campaign by some cereal company in the ‘70s. The grand prize was a $5 per week allowance for a whole year. As a kid I was like wow! $5 per week! It seemed HUGE.
Could make them out of lead, except the price of lead is climbing too, to the point where raw wheelweights are being sold to bullet casters on Fleabay.
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LOL!
Wholeheartedly agree!
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