Posted on 07/06/2020 7:09:03 AM PDT by P.O.E.
Those pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters are far more precious due to a national coin shortage brought on by the coronavirus and resulting shut down.
As a result, the Giant supermarkets chain is the newest member of a growing list of retailers limiting cash transactions and/or demanding exact change.
“Due to the national coin shortage, select Giant registers can only accept credit, debit, and electronic payments at this time,” company spokesman Christopher Brand said in response to PennLive questions about coin shortages on Friday.
As the New York Post reports, Lowe’s home improvement stores have posted signs urging shoppers to pay with exact change or use other forms of payment, as have convenience stores such as 7-Eleven, Pilot and Circle K, according to news reports and social media posts.
(Excerpt) Read more at pennlive.com ...
I have not used cash for many years. I maintain some cass to pay for my haircut and that’s about all.
Using a credit card I not only end the problem of coins but have a precise record of all expenditures.
Cash is just about dead when the boomers go.
What is this thing called cash?
I use credit cards and on the rare condition a store doesn’t take them I used my debit card,
Actually, in an inflationary environment coin values escalate because of the base metal increase. Coinage disappearing is Gresham’s law at work, bad money chasing out good, the good being a currency form that actually reflects value, or at minimum a greater value, in it’s content.
I wasn’t very clear...the value of the coin’s metal is another story.
Debts being the key work. Your FRN’s can be refused in a transaction in which you’ve not been given control of the exchange item.
A restaurant could say they only take gold or silver money for food (like say pre 1965 silver coinage), and price accordingly ($1.50 for a steak dinner). If they allow you to eat it before determining that you actually have 15 silver dimes to pay for it, they’re stuck with taking your $1.50 in paper and clad because you incurred a debt in the transaction. If they make you pay up first in the deal then you’ve either got to show the shiny or go hungry...
“Coins are becoming “precious metal”. ;)”
Not much “precious” in ‘em anymore.
pre-’82 pennies and most older nickles are worth more by metal weight than currency value.
new pennies are simply zinc spray painted with copper.
I have three 5 gallon water containers full of change. I am working the fourth and it is about a quarter full now.
As a matter of habit, every night when I empty my pockets of change, I put everything in the jug. Even if I have paper money. I have been doing this for decades. It is a great way to save money too.
Are you saying a post 1982 zinc penny is going to be worth more than a penny one day?
“True, BUT this practice is illegal. The dollar is legal tender and must be accepted for all debts, says so right on the bills.”
Who uses cash anymore?
Bingo.
Famous last words.
Nope. One of the great myths and 100% FALSE in all phases. The only entity that MUST take cash money is the government. Everybody else is free to refuse.
I finally completed a book of 50 state quarters, filling it with ones that I only found metal detecting. Alaska for some reason was the toughest!
I’m 1 shy on Lincoln cents (gotten 2 S-vdb’s but they are in hard shape). Finished silver Roosevelts, Jeff nickels (the silvers are the easiest to find, probably found a couple rolls of those over the years). Pretty good showings in many of the other silver denominations.
I’ve got a decent numismatic collection, but trying to fill sets with the dirt fishing pole is a fun challenge all its own!
That’s particularly interesting in that postage is actually on par with “lawful money of the US”. Up until as late as the 60’s I believe, Briggs and Stratton would take postage as payment for small under a dollar items via mail order (gaskets, o rings, etc...) and I believe others did so too. Postal money orders are likewise “Lawful Money”.
The “forever” stamp maintains this valuation structure with it always purchasing a first class mailing but varying in value in Federal Reserve Notes over time.
I guess a lot of folks are putting their loose change in to a “change jar” like my wife does. Before we moved a couple of years ago, she had close to a dozen 1 quart mason jars full.
And it is an exceptionally foolish means of diminishing your savings via inflation.
My father taught me the foolishness of hoarding gold or any other coinage or currency over half century ago.
His mother took a teaching job in Prosser, WA in the early 1890's. Her salary was $20 per month. At the end of the first month she was offered her pay in either paper or gold. She took the Double Eagle because nobody in our rather poor family had ever before owned gold. She probably exchanged if for currency the next day, but for that fleeting moment, she owned gold.
In the mid-1960's my father, a coin collector, bought a $20 gold coin dated just prior to the time my grandmother taught school. He explained to me that the coin could possibly (but unlikely) be the the same one that his mother owned.
At the time, gold was held to $35 per ounce by our government. My sister was teaching school in Montana for $350. That was ten times the then value of an ounce of gold.
Dad then explained the damage of inflation. An ounce of gold was once equivalent to a month of teacher pay. That same gold over 70 years later was worth only one tenth of a teacher's monthly salary. And, during all of that time it resided in someone's pocket or dresser drawer, or buried in the back yard and never earned a dime of interest.
Today, a teachers salary is probably worth three or four times the value of an ounce of gold.
So yes, the true value of gold is not dropping as fast as in times past, but it is still a poor investment. And try to buy a gallon of gas, loaf of bread or jug of milk with gold.
Survivalists, hoarders, or the otherwise sane people, would do far better in property or the stock market than accumulating coinage.
When you connect with an attacker with a sack of coins, he feels it.
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