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The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies

theatlantic.com

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Re: The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies

#101

Post by hilbert42 »

DaSHacka wrote: post #87
aussieguy1234 wrote: post #73

If the cooper is worth more than the coin, would melting them down be profitable? In Australia we got rid of our 1c and 2c coins more than 20 years ago.

It already was, a long time ago with the copper pennies. Not sure with the modern Zinc ones, however.

The Imperial Oz penny and halfpenny (currency before 14 February 1966) was always solid copper. Earlier 2/- (two shillings) used to contain silver but that was phased out sometime in the 1950s. If I recall correctly the first (the round) 50c also contained some silver whereas the current dodecagon one is mostly nickel (correct me if I'm wrong).

Re: The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies

#102

Post by Cerium »

JCM9 wrote: post #46
jldugger wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Folks can take them to a bank FWIW my bank refuses to accept unrolled coins, long before this month's retirement of the penny.

A lot of banks just have one of those coin counting machine things (like Coinstar but not Coinstar). Coinstar also often has zero commission options like gift cards that are an easy way to cash in extra change without paying fees.

Average gift card has a discount of 8 to 20% built in. Looks like Coinstar is currently charging 12.9%, so a gift card could actually be more profitable for them.

Re: The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies

#103

Post by c22 »

JCM9 wrote: post #46
jldugger wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Folks can take them to a bank FWIW my bank refuses to accept unrolled coins, long before this month's retirement of the penny.

A lot of banks just have one of those coin counting machine things (like Coinstar but not Coinstar). Coinstar also often has zero commission options like gift cards that are an easy way to cash in extra change without paying fees.

If you're feeding it pennies you can also just give it one penny at a time to avoid the fees.

Re: The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies

#104

Post by ravedave5 »

wyatt_dolores wrote: post #71
evanelias wrote: post #57

At minimum they're useful as makeshift pie weights when blind-baking a pie crust. After shaping the dough in the baking dish, cover it in aluminum foil and then fill it with pennies. They conduct heat well, and prevent the dough from bubbling or shrinking.

Oh my goodness please no one take this seriously. Heating pennies will result in harmful zinc off-gassing. You do not want to breathe this in. Use dry beans for blind-baking. They are almost infinitely reusable with no harmful effects.

First they are coated in copper, and second nobody bakes pie crusts at a temp that would cause zinc to offgas and third zinc fever is not a big deal unless you're breathing a bunch every day.

Re: The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies

#105

Post by ralferoo »

mmooss wrote: post #55

This rounds physical currency to the nearest $0.05, effectively. Why not round everything to the nearest $0.1? The math and adjustments (changes to every printed price, etc.) would be simpler. How much for the wine? "$19.9". It seems much simpler to me, though I'm sure it's been discussed ... Is there some item that would be problematic to round to $0.1? I suppose anything that is fractionally priced at ≤$0.05 is now…

In Hong Kong, it's very common now to see prices with just a single digit after the decimal point. That said, they haven't had a 5c coin since 1989 and HK$0.1 isn't worth much more than US$0.01.

For me, one of the nicest currency units right now is the Taiwanese Dollar - 31 TWD to 1 USD and 40 TWD to 1 GBP. They don't have any smaller coins now, so it's nice that everything is in integer units, but the numbers aren't crazily large.

Re: The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies

#106

Post by adastra22 »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #89
internet2000 wrote: post #2

> Many Americans—and many people who, though not American, enjoy watching from a safe distance as predictable fiascoes unfold in this theoretical superpower from week to week—find themselves now pondering one question. This is way too much spite for an article about coins. Lord.

I took it at humorous rather than spiteful.

I fail to see the humor.

Re: The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies

#107

Post by adastra22 »

dehrmann wrote: post #56
zdragnar wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a bunch of regulations that need tweaking. AIUI, it's illegal to charge SNAP more than other customers. someone who paid cash and gets rounded down technically pays less than what the government got charged. It's only on the order of pennies, I don't think the law cares about that at all.

I don't buy the SNAP argument because there's already rounding when taxes are applied, and half cents are still legal tender, so you could go into a store, tell them they should have charged half a cent less, and then they'd be in a similar trivial violation of SNAP.

Yeah this is the kind of objection dreamed up by an engineer, who thinks that law is mechanically applied. In reality, if there are no other factors this spends two seconds in front of a judge, who then throws it out with prejudice for wasting the court’s time.

Re: The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies

#108

Post by stevekemp »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #76
ghssds wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so easy to use coins, pennies included, in day-to-day transactions I never accumulate any. Accumulating pennies or other coins is a concept I don't understand. You can spend up to 4 pennies in any purchase you do, and if you don't can't never receive more than 4. For nickels, dimes, and quarters, the maximum is smaller.

Most of our supermarkets have at least one self service machine that accepts change. Once a week I pour any loose change in then settle the rest with a card.

I guess this might depend where you are.

When I lived in Scotland there was a "loose change" machine at the local Tesco. You pour in your coins and it would give you a receipt you could take to a cashier to get cash back - but the downside was that it charged you something like 10% of the total as a fee. Which I wouldn't pay.

Edit: I just searched and the Tesco documentation says "There is a 25p transaction fee and an 11.5% processing fee on the total amount of coins you put in the Coinstar centre. For charity donations, this processing fee is reduced to 8.9%." (wow, how generous!)

Re: The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies

#109

Post by tonyedgecombe »

stevekemp wrote: post #108
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of our supermarkets have at least one self service machine that accepts change. Once a week I pour any loose change in then settle the rest with a card.

I guess this might depend where you are. When I lived in Scotland there was a "loose change" machine at the local Tesco. You pour in your coins and it would give you a receipt you could take to a cashier to get cash back - but the downside was that it charged you something like 10% of the total as a fee. Which I wouldn't pay. Edit: I just searched and the Tesco documentation says "There is a 25p transaction fee and a…

I meant self service machines where you pay for your shopping. There are usually one or two that accept change.

Re: The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies

#110

Post by bccdee »

internet2000 wrote: post #2

> Many Americans—and many people who, though not American, enjoy watching from a safe distance as predictable fiascoes unfold in this theoretical superpower from week to week—find themselves now pondering one question. This is way too much spite for an article about coins. Lord.

If the author of the article had done a bit of searching, they might know that Canadians (the primary predictable American ficasco spectators) phased out pennies years ago. We also "had no plan" for the remaining pennies, and we didn't really need one. They get deposited, lost, and thrown away over time—that's why the mint had to keep printing them. Now they've gone the way of the 50-cent piece. It's not a big deal. Frankly I'm surprised the US didn't do it sooner.
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