... Meanwhile, Your Treasury Is Doing REALLY Important Work

[filkertom]

The coin that costs more to make than it is worth is getting a makeover.

Comments

[peachtales.livejournal.com]

Oh boy. That's just amazingly bad timing. Again.

[ailsaek.livejournal.com]

Oh, for pete's sake. Why don't they just retire the damned things?

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Prices have gone up by a factor of ten since I was a kid. We didn't need tenth-cent pieces then, and now the penny is essentially a tenth-cent piece. It's a silly thing to keep around.

[armb.livejournal.com]

It's about the same as a UK 1/2p piece. Which we got rid of in 1984
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/1/newsid_2828000/2828819.stm

But getting rid of the 1p piece, or the cent, is probably psychologically harder than a fractional coin. I'm a bit surprised the dollar note hasn't been replaced by a coin yet, too, in spite of similar issues. The 50p piece replaced the 10 shilling note in 1969, and the pound coin the note over 1983 (coin in) to 1988 (note withdrawn). (Any rational country would have made different denomination notes obviously different to the visually impaired by now too.)

But now is probably not the ideal time to say "that American currency you know and love - we're changing it, and to really rub in just how much less it's worth these days, we're dropping the fiddly stuff".

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

They've tried to replace the dollar with a coin. At least three times. Americans are just incredibly conservative about their money. Insanely, the majority oppose eliminating the penny, even though it's reached the point where every cash register I see has a little pot next to it where they throw extra pennies just so people can grab a couple of extras so that they can pay exact change.

That's pretty damned silly if you think about it.

[nomaddervish.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't rate the failures of recent attempts at dollar coins as solely a matter of conservatism. It would also help if they didn't quite designing them to look and feel almost-but-not-quite like quarters.

[jerusha.livejournal.com]

The reasons the transition never took boil down to: they never stopped printing paper dollars. As I understand it: vending machine manufacturers don't want to re-tool to accept the coins; consumers don't want them if they can't be used widely/easily, which includes vending machines and the like; businesses don't want to buy them from banks to give in change if consumers don't want them; the mint ends up with a huge backlog of dollar coins and concludes that Americans just don't want to make the switch.

I can't tell you if Americans would have accepted the dollar coins if they were indeed universally useful; I can tell you that, just based on the experiences of other countries in replacing lower-denominated paper money with coins, that people will make the switch and get used to it if you just STOP PRINTING THE [CENSORED] PAPER MONEY! Sorry, I get a little vehement about this issue...

[bryanp.livejournal.com]

As I understand it: vending machine manufacturers don't want to re-tool to accept the coins;

Speaking as someone who spent 15 years working for one of the biggest soda companies in the world (think 3 colors, not 2) that isn't as true as it used to be. Any changer mechanism of even vaguely recent vintage can handle dollar coins with only the most minor modification. The problem is that there is a huge installed base of old changer mechs, not to mention a vast number of bill validators which would suddenly be rendered ... well, not exactly useless but definitely obsolescent. As the old changer mechs wear out it will be less of an issue to vending companies.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

What gets me is why they have to make them out of this copper-sheathed zinc business instead of just plain solid copper. Is copper that expensive these days?

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

Well...I'm pretty sure enough copper to make a penny would be worth more than one cent.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

It has been that expensive since they switched in the early 1980's.

But the fun part is that you can grind the copper off one half, and stack a half dozen pennies separated by saltwater-soaked blotter paper, you get a battery that generates enough current to run an LED. (the salt I used wasn't table salt--I don't recall what exactly it was, but table salt may work)

[signy1.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it really is. Fortunately, the treasury has come up with a solution-- they'll be making pennies from steel, like they did in '43 when copper was scarce for war-related reasons.

[landley.livejournal.com]

Yes, copper is that expensive these days:

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_418275.html

I remember reading about a copper "mining" company that actually built a machine to sort copper pennies out of rolls of pennies. It's illegal to melt them down here in this country, but they then sold them to foreign companies to do exactly that, making quite a profit until the feds (possibly the secret service, which handles things like counterfeiting) stepped in and asked the banks to stop sending them pennies. (That's how they were noticed: ordering large quantities of pennies from banks and then depositing lots of them back. Kind of easy to spot.)

Don't remember the name of the company. Might still have the URL of the article somewhere. But that's why you don't see nearly so many old pennies in circulation anymore, even in just the few months it was operating an industrial operation like that can make quite a dent.

Of course if you think mining the US penny supply for copper to sell is silly, wait until you see what zinc prices are doing:
http://ewweb.com/mag/electric_rising_zinc_prices/

It's getting darn hard to find something to make pennies out of that _can't_ be profitably melted down and sold for the metal. They're going to have to switch to plastic or something if this keeps up, or just ACKNOWLEDGE REALITY, which the current lot's never been big on...

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

There's a thriving "business" in stealing copper wire and selling it to scrap dealers.

A Google search (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=copper+wire+theft&btnG=Google+Search&aq=2&oq=%22copper+wire%22) turns up a few articles.

Of course, it might just be a large supply of really stupid people.

[jfd62780.livejournal.com]

Ironically, I just detarnished a few wheatbacks earlier today for shits and giggles! :P

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

Maybe they're trying to distract us with something small and shiny?

[bschilli.livejournal.com]

Look at the size of a penny. There isn't room for much detail.

Have you ever taken the U.S. Mint tour? Almost every coin they make is a penny. They made over eight billion in 2006. And almost all of them end up in someone's dresser drawer.

[awfulhorrid.livejournal.com]

And the mint makes even more money from the casting of coins when those pennies are thus removed from circulation and "need" to be replaced. If they actually wear out and are turned back in for recasting then the mint(*) has to pay back a percentage of the value like a returned deposit.

If they are never returned, the mint gets to keep the difference. I'm not much on big C conspiracy theories, but I'm willing to believe that the mint lobbies for the continued production of pennies at least partially due to this fact.

(* - The mint is a contracted service and is not actually a division of the US Government.)

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

I just caught this posted by one of my LJ friends:

Dear American:
I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.
I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.
I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.
This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.
Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.
Yours Faithfully,
Minister of Treasury Paulson

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Oh. Wow. New pennies with new pictures. Yay.

What a fucking waste of money and copper!

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

When you said "The coin that costs more to make than it is worth"
I didn't believe it ...

... but Wikipedia confirms that the US Mint says it costs 1.67 cents per coin to produce and ship pennies, and 9.53 cents per nickel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cent_(United_States_coin)#Metal_content

So it's not worth making nickels either.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

Uh-oh, it shows him reading a book... And it ISN'T the Bible!

That's gonna piss some people off.

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

The Mint: In for a penny; in for a pound. Or at least a pounding in public opinion.