Bid Farewell to Pennies and Nickels!

Wealth Wire ^ | , November 26th, 2012 | Brittany Stepniak

[angelcindy]

The U.S. is following Canada's footsteps regarding the production of pennies and nickels. According to U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Giethner, our U.S. Mint intends to remove the penny and nickel coins from circulation beginning early in January 2013.

[A Formerly Proud Canadian]

Just wait until the Fed starts issuing polymer (plastic) money, like we now have in Canada! Our $100s and $50s are not difficult to separate however, the $20s tend to stick together! If you are in Canada and get the new $20s, be VERY careful when you are counting them out and using them! If you are not careful, you will find that our already high prices will be even higher!

[FreedomNotSafety]

Read somewhere that non cash transactions do not get rounded.

Since rounding could add up to 5% on some transactions (e.g. $0.95 purchase would be a $1 with no change so that is about 5%)we might see the development of low cost micro credit transactions.

Or maybe we see things like I remember as a child such as 2 pieces of candy for a penny, then of course it was 2 pieces for a nickle,, and now...well you can’t find candy by the piece...never mind. What can you buy for less than a dime?

[Rio]

Upon doing some research, I believe the original article to be completely wrong. Geithner did mention (back in March) attempts to reduce the costs of minting, but never eliminating these coins.
And as was pointed out, Congress controls these things, not Treasury.

[KarlInOhio]

Oops. Got the metals backwards. A nickel is 25% nickel and 75% copper, so the google formula is "($7.61 per pound * 0.25 + $3.53 per pound * 0.75) * 5 grams" and the scrap value is only $0.05 per nickel.

[GOPsterinMA]

“sgtjackvincennes Numanist Ping”!

[WVKayaker]

Did it look like this? I'll give you five of Obamao's paper dollars for it.

Sorry, but that's an altered coin, IMHO! Compare it to my other post!

[longtermmemmory]

and who authorized this? are these the same idiots who made the 1 dollar quarter sized coin? and AD CAMPAIGN to use money?

This is just a pure unadulterated move to create inflation.

[discostu]

I’m too lazy to ever worry about being on the grid. I live a very boring life, anybody examining my transactional history is probably being punished.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Walk down the aisles at supermarket — almost everything is in increments of $1.

We need to lop two zeroes off our currency and put some worth back into the coinage.

[longtermmemmory]

this is just a 9 cent national sales tax.

[longtermmemmory]

this is just a 9 cent national sales tax.

[discostu]

They take quarters now.

[roadcat]

4. Consider the next coin, maybe $2. You should be able to buy a cheap lunch for a couple coins.

Reminds me of my high school years in the sixties. A good cheeseburger or sandwich was 30 cents. A deluxe cheeseburger on a french roll was 36 cents. Fries were 17 cents, milkshakes were 19 cents. Never really had to use paper money, just change to buy lunch.

[dalereed]

Stick your dollar coins where the sun doesn’t shine!!!

I won’t accept them as change!!!

[Donkey Odious]

Anything in an “odd” amount will have to be paid with a debit or credit card.....

Up next: rounding to the closest fifty cents.

[Graybeard58]

So this can replace the give-a-penny / take-a-penny tray at the 7-11.

I like the tray at my local store, they have a sign on it that says:

Got a penny?

Leave a penny.

Need a penny?

Get a job.

[Atlas Sneezed]

It’s time once again to trot out my currency and coinage reform proposal.

Given that there has been ample inflation on the order of 10 since the last change, and we have an excessive array of confusing coins and low-value currency, it is time for a practical simplification.

First, denominations need to proceed in a proportional way without large value ratios or crowded ratios. The classic 1-5-10-50-100... progression with ratios of 2.0-5.0 is ideal as a minimum, with denominations of 2, 20, etc. being optional for important valuations.

Second, we want to avoid coins of such low value that they are more trouble than they are worth. Economic waste occurs with the extra time wasted dealing with needlessly small coins. A dime is worth less than a minute of labor at minimum wages, and no currency transaction requires anything smaller than this denomination. The penny and the half-cent served well as the smallest denominations when their values were that of today’s dime. (Note to any economic imbeciles: electronic transactions are often conducted in smaller units than our smallest coin, and that cash registers have been “rounding” - without bias up or down - to the nearest small coin for sales tax purposes for generations. Google “sales tax rounding” if you have doubts and read a few articles).

Third, we want to set the coin/currency transition at a practical level that avoids our wallets being overstuffed with small bills, or our pockets with too many coins. Coins should be suitable for purchases like a magazine, a coffee, a lunch, or a brief cab ride.

Fourth, the ratio between the largest and smallest coin should be limited to a practical factor. Consider that the economy functions effectively with coins at 0.05, 0.10, and 0.25, with pennies treated as trash, and larger coins generally not used. That is a factor of 5 between the largest and smallest coin. A factor of 10-50 may be ideal, and a factor of 100 (as in actual current coinage) is excessive.

Fifth, we need bills of adequately high value for large cash purchases (consider the largest Euro note has a value of about 6.5 times that of the largest US note.)

Sixth, coins should be sized approximately proportional to their value for ease of recognition and use.

The proposal:

Coins:
$0.10 (slightly smaller than the current dime)
$0.50 (slightly smaller than the current nickel, larger than the penny)
$1.00 (slightly smaller than the current quarter dollar, larger than the nickel)
$5.00 (slightly smaller than the current half-dollar) Or it could be set at $2 to avoid overlap with a $5 note.

Currency Notes:
$5 (optional)
$10
$20 (optional)
$50
$100
$500

Our current 6 coins are replaced with 4.
Our current 7 notes are replaced with 4-6.

If you want to talk about making coins out of silver or gold, I’m even more enthusiastic:

$1000 gold coin (1 oz)
$500 gold coin (1/2 oz)
$100 gold coin (1/10 oz)
$20 silver coin (1 oz)
$10 silver coin (1/2 oz)
$2 silver coin (1/10 oz)
$1 copper or base metal coin (1/2 oz)
$0.50 copper or base metal coin (1/4 oz)
$0.10 copper or base metal coin (1/10 oz)

[elkfersupper]

Except the people LIKE the paper dollars

We used to like freedom and liberty also, but then we elected Presidents like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt; had the fortuitous circumstances for the Left of Lyndon Johnson and Gerald Ford; then we elected a Nixon, and some Bushes.

We finally wound up with a two-term President with the unlikely name of Barack Hussein Obama.

As bizarre as it may seem to lose the $1 bill, it has been even more bizarre to me to realize that the majority of people I circulate among every day are either generationally manipulative, grossly uneducated or mentally ill.

[beelzepug]

“... most merchants will still accept them. So if a merchant tries rounding up to the next dime increment, you can probably force them to take your pennies and nickels.”

I didn’t see where it said they were being taken out of circulation, only that production would stop, Did I miss something?

[roadcat]

When will people start hoarding their Lincoln Memorial pennies and only spend their new shield pennies?

We already are. Pennies before 1983 had more copper content. 95 percent copper. After that, 2.5 percent copper.