We aren’t here to praise the penny, but rather, to bury it. The penny, and its counterparts, have been vanishing all around the world as the cost of minting one far outweighs its value. But hackers had already lost a big asset: real copper pennies, and now even the cheaply made ones are doomed to extinction.
If you check your pockets and find a pre-1982 penny, it’s almost all copper. Well, 95% of its slightly-more-than-3-gram heft is pure copper. Since then, the copper penny’s been a fraud, weighing 2.5 g and containing only a 2.5% copper plate over a zinc core. During WWII, they did make some oddball steel pennies, but that was just a temporary measure.
Penny Science
If you are a certain age, you might remember building a “voltaic pile.” These primitive batteries use pennies, cardboard soaked in vinegar, and aluminum foil. Granted, it wasn’t very practical, so raiding your couch for change to make a battery was never really practical, but it was a fun science experiment. There are dozens of YouTube videos showing this popular experiment, including the [ScienceBuddies] video below.
Old pennies were also a cheap and easy source of copper. Vinegar or lemon juice and some voltage made it simple to copperplate another metal object, like a nail. Copper also makes a good heatsink. We’ve seen Raspberry Pis and similar boards with heatsinks that cost an integer number of pennies, because that’s all they were. An oxidized penny shows up in some foxhole radios. They were also handy little weights if you made a balance or for taming a wobbly ceiling fan.
If you were a real kid chemist, you might have done the classic trick of turning a penny into “silver” and then “gold.” You used not-so-lovely-to-handle sodium hydroxide, some zinc, and a flame to actually convert the penny to brass. It wasn’t really a precious metal, but still a good trick if you were a kid with a chemistry set. As the video from [Simon] below shows, that will still work with the copperplate pennies.
New Pennies
Not that you can’t have fun with zinc pennies. If you scratch the plating a bit and dip it in HCL, the zinc core fizzes away. What’s left is a hollow copper penny. If you don’t like using HCL, we hear you can do it over a stove and simply melt the zinc. We wouldn’t try either one of those without a vent hood and an unhealthy disregard for your personal safety, so, you know, don’t do that. But know that you could. [Craig] shows how to remove the zinc or the copper in the video below.
The legality of all this has always been a little suspect. Since 2006, it has been illegal to melt down coins for their metal value. Technically, using it in a science class probably won’t bring the Treasury agents swooping into your classroom, but you have been warned.
Household Hacker
Of course, it is going to take some time for all the pennies to really vanish. There are plenty of them, and you can still get around a hundred for a buck. But when they are gone, what other household items are easy to hack for science? Aluminum foil, maybe? Tell us your favorite in the comments.
Whether they were copper slugs or thinly plated zinc tokens, pennies were a weirdly perfect hacker material: cheap, conductive, sacrificial, and everywhere. We’ll miss them.
Featured image: “wealth of pennies” by [Reza]
feed them to a coin star (do they still make those) and let the mint dispose of them for you.
12.9% plus a 0.99 transaction fee.
SCREW COINSTAR
most banks will give you coin wrappers for free and will give you 100% value of whatever you deposit.
If you look around, some coinstars will give you gift cards to selected merchants for “free” (presumably, the merchant pays your coinstar fee). So you put in $100 of coins, get a $100 gift card. Sure, you can only spend it there, but if it is somewhere you’d spend at anyway…
So if I fed the machine only 1 cent, I’d owe them $1??
I suppose the people who have a lot of loose change laying around and the people who have a lot of free time to wrap the coins up overlaps quite a bit;)
I wrapped up most of my change a few week back using a cheapo coin sorter Ive had for years. $400 in quarters(40x$10), $350 in dimes (70x$5), $200 in nickels (100x$2), and $50 in pennies (100x$0.50). Took a little over 2 hours while watching TV.
WAAAY better than losing $130 at a coinstar.
Cool story you made up there with an exact $1k in change that neatly fit your narrative about the fee.
None of the banks I’ve called will take rolled coins.
the CoinStar at my nearest grocery store doesn’t have any fees.
Your bank won’t take rolled coins? That’s crazy! I wonder why they won’t do that.
Scammers.
The first thing you have to do with rolled coins is break the roll open.
I know one bank with coin counters.
Free service for customers.
They just send the coins to a central office to be counted anyways, so slipping in washers and shirt buttons doesn’t work – they’ll just reject them. You’ll hear from your money in a month.
I Was Working Drive Thru At Burger 🍔 King….
Manager Brought Up My Change….
2 ROLLS Of Dimes Had 4 Dimes In It …
The Rest Of The Weight Was Sand ⌛….!!!
Chase
Capital One
Wells Fargo
Bank of America
Citibank
Citizens Bank
Regions Bank
HSBC
Hancock Whitney
Navy Federal Credit Union
ALL take rolled coins from customers for deposit. I dont know a single bank or credit union that doesnt. Were you just calling in as a rando off the street? Most banks wont do anything for a non account holder anymore.
My bank used to have a coinstar that was zero fees for customers. Then they unfortunately got rid of it.
For those that don’t know, for context, the US mint stopped pressing Pennie’s.
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There is no process for getting rid of Pennies. There is an excellent article in The Atlantic (paywall but maybe you can get a free article or two) about how the US mint abruptly stopped minting pennies, how they were a useless waste anyway, why they exist at all and the deeply mystifying utter and complete lack of a plan, at all, for what to do now. Disposal, it’s tons and tons of basically useless landfill waste, since zinc cannot be recycled anywhere close to safely, and nothing about what retailers etc are supposed to do. everyone rounds up?
I didn’t make it up. It’s directly from the article I referenced:
“The worst-case scenario would seem to be that we have only just a few days ago stopped manufacturing billions and billions and billions of hazardously produced zinc disks with no practical use that are also unsellable as scrap.”
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“Recycled zinc is worth only about a quarter of recycled copper; nearly 1 million tons of copper are recycled in the U.S. each year, versus only about 165,000 tons of zinc”
.
And separating a mixture of copper and zinc is anything but trivial and not at all industrially viable unless heavily subsidized (see: Canada, same article”
Perhaps you should read the article too.
Zinc oxide smelting can cause poisoning, most commonly through inhaling the fumes, which can lead to metal fume fever. This is a flu-like illness with symptoms like fever, chills, body aches, cough, and a metallic taste in the mouth.
“everyone rounds up?”
It varies. A Midwest fast food chain, Culver’s, or up signs saying they’re rounding to even (IIRC). A convenience store chain, Holiday’s (a subsidiary of Circle K) announced they are rounding cash transactions down to the nearest nickel (that is, in the customer’s favor). I would expect most places to round to even (aka Banker’s Rounding).
they say that now.
Overtime theyll start pricing everything to even five cent increments. When making the decision to set those prices corporate will undoubtedly choose to set prices higher not lower.
And then sales tax is applied… how often is that going to result in an even 5¢ increment?
@Zangar
Sales tax where I live is 10% so if prices are set in even 5 cent increments….ALWAYS
What is 10% of $1.25?
@yooper
yeah yeah, I posted it then immediately realized my mistake but HAD doesnt allow edits.
Guess its $0.15 now. You know the tax man will ALWAYS round up. Only bil/trillionaires get a break there.
Actually yes..luke example. Maverik gas stations, we are told to round to nearest nickel.
So if modern USA pennies are copper and zinc in one convenient package, then you don’t need to take apart a D cell to harvest its zinc to make a penny-zinc battery anymore (yes, we got the irony of it at the time).
Just sand off one side of the penny to expose the zinc, and stack them up with the appropriate paper towel/salt electrolyte sandwich.
are the war time steel pennies iron-y?
zinc plated. Tend to get dull and ugly
I’ve probably got 20 or so of them. They all look like they were just minted.
“as the cost of minting one far outweighs its value”
Ugh. That’s not how money works!
Look, I’m not saying it is or isn’t time to get rid of the penny. Under any condition other than a really bad recession there will be inflation so while not at a constant rate, the value of any unit of money falls over time. And yes, the time comes to get rid of the smaller stuff. Is that time here? I neither know nor care. I just wish people wouldn’t always be trying to simplify things so much then talking like they know when they do not. It enables a lot of bad politics.
Anyway, if it is time to eliminate the penny it isn’t because the cost of minting a penny is greater than 1¢.
Look, if I offered to make you a penny. But you had to pay the cost of doing so. Obviously that is a bum deal, you wouldn’t take it. The value of A PENNY is 1¢.
However, that’s not how mints work. The government doesn’t just print it’s own money to spend. To do so would create massive inflation. Only desperate nations that are about to fall do that. They only print what is needed to replace damaged old coins and bills plus a bit to cover inflation. The government’s own expenses are paid for by taxes, not mints.
What they do mint money for is the value it brings to the economy in enabling easy transactions. Easier transactions mean more transactions. It’s an important part of a healthy economy.
So what is the value of THE PENNY? It’s not the same as the value of A PENNY. The value of the penny is that we can make transactions with granularity down to 1¢. Without that prices will be rounded up to the nearest increment of 5, the nickel. And how about sales tax? It varies by state but it’s likely to take your even-nickel price and turn it into something that cannot be represented without a penny. So.. more rounding up.
With everything will be rounded up. What’s the worst you can lose? 4¢? Ok, that’s not a lot. But… that’s a potential 4¢ on every transaction!
Remember the story about the guy who hacked his company’s accounting software to pay everyone’s fractional-cent pay which previously had been truncated over to his own account? Well.. the next version of that becomes fraction of a nickel! On the scale of the entire national economy that is HUGE!
See, the value of a unit of currency existing is not limited to the value of the money it represents.
Still not convinced?
Ok.
That 1 penny, which the mint spend more than 1¢ to create… That’s 1¢ of transactions in our economy EVERY time it is spent. How many times do you think that coin gets spent before it is lost or destroyed? Is that still less than the cost of making it? I doubt it.
Again… the real point… pretending things are simple can lead to incorrect conclusions. Embrace the complexity of the real world. Kindergarten arithmetic is perfectly suited for making change with the ice-cream truck guy but not a good way to run an economy.
“That 1 penny, which the mint spend more than 1¢ to create… That’s 1¢ of transactions in our economy EVERY time it is spent. How many times do you think that coin gets spent before it is lost or destroyed? Is that still less than the cost of making it? I doubt it.”
Economics of a plastic card with whatever one wants to stamp or put on it is better, and weighs in aggregate a lot less.
Well I think you are assuming when people say that they mean their face value. That’s probably been a negative balance almost from the start. I take it as meaning the “value of it” not the “face value of the currency” — ambiguous, but then again, none of that was really the point.
Yes it does, to some extent, and yes it does do that as a result.
The government doesn’t create money directly. It sells bonds, which the FED buys off the market and uses them to increase reserves. The reserves can then be used to increase the money supply, so the FED is in control of keeping the supply of money in alignment with the size of the economy to the 2% inflation target. The US government does issue more bonds faster than the old ones “mature”, to pay for some of its deficit, which means it is essentially printing money for itself to spend, and has been doing so since the 1980’s. Clinton was the last president to try and balance the books.
The US government also owns the mint, so they could make themselves coins and create money directly, but the creation of new money that way is too slow to impact inflation and there’s often a shortage rather than excess of coinage.
“It was Henry Ford who said in substance this: ‘It is perhaps well enough that the people of the nation do not know or understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning’.” – Charles Binderup, 19 March 1937, in the House of Representatives (Congressional Record—House 81:2528).
NOT nutjob stuff. 100% correct:
The Biggest Scam In The History Of Mankind – Hidden Secrets of Money Ep 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFDe5kUUyT0
Another good one about the origins of the current system:
Money as Debt I – Revised Edition 2009 (Full Movie)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nBPN-MKefA
“However, that’s not how mints work. The government doesn’t just print it’s own money to spend. To do so would create massive inflation. Only desperate nations that are about to fall do that. They only print what is needed to replace damaged old coins and bills plus a bit to cover inflation. The government’s own expenses are paid for by taxes, not mints.”
Uhm, if mints only make enough money to replace the money in circulation – how did that money in circulation get printed in the first place? Are you saying that we have the same number of dollars in circulation today that we had in 1985?
Central banks print currency well in excess of replacement volumes. That is why the Fed targets a 2% inflation rate – to ensure enough money is in circulation to support an expanding economy without inflation getting out of control (Zimbabwe) or constraining the growth of the economy or triggering deflation.
The creation of a penny creates 1 cent of money. You can say that minting the penny creates 1 cent of value in the economy. But you destroy several cents of value in order to do that. That a penny is involved in multiple transactions is just transferring that one cent among people until it is moved to the place of greatest value (which usually means ending up in a bowl somewhere almost immediately).
” how did that money in circulation get printed in the first place?” –
That Wasn’t meant to be a complete explanation. As much as I was complaining about over-simplification the entire economic process does not belong in one HaD comment. Of course the ammount of money in circulaiton is not kept a constant and does increase over time. Is that really relevant to whether we should keep the penny?
“You can say that minting the penny creates 1 cent of value in the economy. ”
Yes, you can say anything you like. But you would be wrong. The value is in all the products and services that the economy is producing or put another way, that people are exchanging. You didn’t add any value to the economy in minting a penny. Rather the value of every cent has been diluted (a very insignificant amount) by the additional 1¢ now in circulation.
Wall of text by a sweet summer child who understands nothing…
Presumes to explain with ‘facts’ he imagined.
Pats head and sends Zangar out to play (in traffic).
If he were right we’d be getting rich printing money.
After all, the new money is ‘worth’ its face value * number of times exchanged!
We’re all rich!
I personally own 1 billion leaves.
We get even ‘richer’ if people rush to spend any money they get their hands on!
Which could happen, has happened before.
Zangar really should kick his teachers square in the crotch.
This is what passes for a comment on HAD now? Your points are fine, but I question your personal attacks and not so subtly suggesting someone should commit suicide? Do better!
Hey dipshit! That wasn’t meant to be a complete description of everything regarding economics. In a HaD comment? Really? The point was the value of a denomination of coin (or bill) is in how it facilitates the many transactions that make up our economy.
Or are you so simple as to think coin is struck then yay, that denomination worth of value has been added to our economy? If it worked like that then yes, might as well use leaves!
Dumbass!
Square in the crotch.
They failed you.
Trolls gonna troll I guess. This is the pettiest comment that adds absolutely nothing relevant to the conversation. Says a whole lot more about you than who you think you are insulting.
Coins typically stay in circulation for an average of 25 to 30 years
Eliminating the penny is only expected to save around $56 million annually.
Trump’s first term golf trips cost taxpayers $151.5 million over four years.
A little less than 3 years of penny minting.
Eliminating the penny isnt about saving money. Its just an excuse to nibble away a bit more of our earnings at the till. Nothing will really get “rounded down” because prices will just be “nudged up” instead so everything rounds higher not lower.
For most transactions, the cost of handling a penny exceeds the worth of a penny. Removing pennies from the money supply will boost the economy far in excess of the cost of creating pennies, and far in excess of the pennies in circulation.
This is spot on. Years before Canada eliminated our penny, I had a job where I had to count my float at end of shift. Three times. Then the shift manager counted to verify, then rolled them. At some point someone came down to the office, probably the accountant or owner, and took all our cash to the bank, driving time, standing in line, et cetera.
We didn’t count pennies, because the accountant deemed the labor cost to be greater than the value of the pennies. We didn’t have much volume in coins, only one cash register. Pennies just went into a penny bucket, some stayed in the tray.
It was around that time that “take a penny/leave a penny” trays started appearing, and we stopped dealing with pennies at all.
Years later, I was in vending and similarly stockpiled $0.1 and $0.05 coins. None of the machines accepted them, they were incidental income from jams and people trying to pay with them in machines that took loonies, toonies, and quarters. I rejoiced when pennies were pulled, they were a huge source of coin jams, from little kids putting then in coin mechanisms.
Small value coins are a blight on society.
The real problem with the penny, as detailed elsewhere, is that the mint produces tons of these. To be used once and then vanish. Well, not vanish. Go into a coin jar or some such to gather dust. If all of the pennies in “circulation” were returned at once, it would overwhelm the system.
I attempt, mostly, to carry around a little change. Quarters, dimes, nickels, and four pennies. But I don’t always so I also collect coins.
Every once in a while, I will grab the collection, count, and roll. After seeing something on the big deal with copper pennies, I also used a small scale to sort out the zinc ones. So I have a small collection of copper pennies. Just in case. :-)
Three is an excellent article referenced above that explains how useless Pennies are. They basically go from mint to retailers to give as change then to sock drawers, couch cushions etc. and then landfill. Since moving or using or even recycling them is always a loss. almost no individual one uses or pennies at all to pay for stuff and certainly not as many as they get as change- even us luddites that still use cash.
That one way flow was why even if a coin is “good” or holds up for decades the mint still has to keep hammering them out for what is essentially single-use the majority of the time. It’s totally useless. Worse than useless.
Is this a good paraphrase? “The value is so low that people aren’t using them to facilitate transactions”
That’s a fine argument to get rid of them.
It has absolutely nothing to do with the ratio of the cost to mint a penny vs it’s face value. That was the only point I was trying to make.
Sorry man. you are really wrong about most of your comment. I recommend you read the “real” article in Atlantic or the New York Times one “America Must Free Itself from the Tyranny of the Penny” before you really did your heels in on this one. One example:
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“That 1 penny, which the mint spend more than 1¢ to create… That’s 1¢ of transactions in our economy EVERY time it is spent. How many times do you think that coin gets spent before it is lost or destroyed? Is that still less than the cost of making it? I doubt it.”
.
From the article I referenced above:
“300 billion pennies—all of them still and indefinitely legal currency—constitute approximately zero percent of the total money supply of the United States (0.0 percent if rounding to one decimal place). The millions of dollars the government loses by paying more than three cents to manufacture one-cent coins represents an infinitesimal fraction of 1 percent of the government’s several-trillion-dollar budget.”
I think you misread my comment as an argument for keeping the Penny. I don’t care. I don’t claim to even know the values of all the variables involved to calculate if it is worth keeping or not. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if it IS time to get rid of it but that’s not my call and it isn’t anywhere even approaching the top of the list of issues I would consider in voting on someone who does make the call.
The point was that people (starting with a certain orange one) keep comparing the face value of the coin to the cost to produce it as though that is what matters.
That’s the obvious method for calculating if it is worth minting or not if you are a counterfeiter. But, for running a nation it needs to be about how having that denomination available in a currency facilitates transactions or does not.
Will there be inevitable round-ups that make transactions more expensive? And thus people will buy less? Or is the amount so small that no one will ever notice? That’s the question to ask, not “what is the comparison of the face value and cost to mint”.
You touched on the actual issue, basically studies found that pennies were not spent, they were/are received as change and are almost never spent instead residing in cars, jars, and houses for years.
There are something like 44 Billion pennies currently in the world.
So the mint would have to make more for those pennies that immediately left circulation, rinse and repeat, day after day. So yes cost is part of the reasoning as well.
It’s not all waste though. People who do IV drugs often use pennies + vinegar mixture to clean needles for reuse (helps prevent HIV).
It’s a long story but completely missing the point. The US is bankrupt. The US can’t afford the interest on the national debt anymore. If the US can still be saved, it can only be done by removing every possible expense, while trying to increase the output. The penny costs money right now, so it’s gone. The US government needs to go on the biggest diet it has ever been on, to prevent the end of a nation. Not just tightening the belt, but removing the bloat with a chainsaw. Ask any serious economic expert and they will say the same thing. This isn’t even a political thing. The US is on the edge of collapsing due to being mismanaged. It’s not going to be pretty if it’s done right. If cuts aren’t made, then hyperinflation is the only thing left, which will result in everyone becoming extremely poor and is likely forcing the US to break apart in multiple countries. It’s not just the penny, it’s everything, every expensive. That’s why cuts are happening. Cutting aid, firing as many bureaucrats as possible, forcing everyone on food benefits to reapply and make sure they actually need it, it’s all part of it. “However, that’s not how mints work. The government doesn’t just print it’s own money to spend. To do so would create massive inflation. Only desperate nations that are about to fall do that.” That is a major problem in the US. The US is doing exactly that and has been doing that for decades. That’s why it’s common to ask, what happened in 1971? The US is still being backed by oil that’s why it still appears to run sort of ok, but that won’t last as the economy has become weaker and weaker over the last few decades.
Just in case, I’m not American, but someone who read way too many books on economics, from the chicago school to keynesian and from marxist/fascist to the austrian school.
” forcing everyone on food benefits to reapply and make sure they actually need it,”
Cool. So.. how many of those bureaucrats you suggested firing would we need to keep or re-hire to process all that? And are you SURE that would save more than it costs? And how long should that process take? Should I assume then that the people who DO need it will go hungry during that period?
Did you know that the majority of people who DO qualify have full time jobs?
1971… so you are a fan of the gold standard. Ok. But here, I’ll tell you another thing about 1971. The US minimum wage in 1971 was $1.60. Doesn’t sound like a lot right? Sure… But adjust that for inflation and it’s $12.80. What’s today’s minimum wage in the US? $7.25!
I last made $7-something back at the end of the 1990s. I lived with roomates in a run-down apartment where you couldn’t even order a pizza delivery because the delivery people were afraid of the neighborhood. Even then and it was still hard to buy groceries some weeks. I have no idea how one would survive on that today. Cook your Ramen in the gas-station microwave and eat it under a bridge?!?!
So… you think we shouldn’t be paying out so much in food benefits. Me too! But I think I see a better solution to that…. Pay workers at minimum what they did in 1971 (in value, not dollars).
Also… you know all that is almost negligible compared to the full budget of the US government right? Take it down to zero and the debt does not budge. Actually, with all the social problems it would cause, we would probably accrue debt faster paying more for things like law enforcement.
“forcing everyone on food benefits to reapply ”
Benefits are re-certified, which is basically reapplying, for most households every 6-12 months. Households with elderly or disabled recipients are re-certified every 2-3 years.
Foodstamp recipients have to report income changes within 10 days. Failure to report changes can result in clawback, reduction of benefit and/or disqualification for up to one year on the first offense, 2 years on the second, and permanently on the third occurrence.
There are 14,500 Walmart employees on food stamps in just 9 states.
McDonald’s had 8,780 employees receiving SNAP benefits in the nine states that provided data. In those states they were the top two employers with employees receiving assistance.
A 2023 national survey conducted by University of Illinois Chicago of 1,484 Amazon workers across 42 states found that 48% relied on some form of public assistance to meet basic needs, like food and rent.
Its not benefits to our poor and disabled that is crippling our economy. Its the benefits granted to our undertaxed corporations and billionaires that is the problem.
How many of those WalMart/McDonald’s employees are full time?
Many, many recipients of government food programs are cheats, getting benefits under multiple names or multiple times under one name. This theft might be reduced by total recertification.
A single parent with two kids working fulltime can make up to $16.66/hr and still qualify for foodstamps.
Average hourly pay for U.S. Walmart workers has risen from around $12 an hour in 2015 to over $18.25 an hour as of July for its 1.5 million U.S. hourly employees.
The average hourly wage for a McDonald’s employee is approximately $12.43 for a crew member or around $17 per hour for all jobs combined,
So while I cant say how many of walmart/Mcds employees on benefits were fulltimers, its likely that a significant portion of them are.
as to the rest of your post
fake news.
The reality is that estimates place fraudulent claims at being only around 1% of all cases.
To get benefits under multiple names you would have to have stolen an identity with a valid social security number of a person not receiving foodstamps and not having sufficient income to disqualify them from receiving them.
You certainly arent going to be able to receive benefits under the same name multiple times. States use automated systems to check for duplicate participation by cross-referencing data with other states and federal databases.
The US is not and cannot be bankrupt because 100% of its debt is denominated in a currency that it has the power to print.
This isn’t some hypothetical last resort. That’s what is happening to any portion of the yearly deficit that is purchased in the form of bonds by the federal reserve — it’s government finance by money printing. A huge portion of the debt is just elaborate tallying of how much money was printed. The interest is being paid by printing money.
In a very real sense the entire concept of finding government through taxation is a lie. It doesn’t really matter how much they collect. What matters is how much they spend. They spend dollars (which they print) and acquire resources. Those resources come from somewhere. The dollars are just symbolic. Government spending is really 100% financed by in-kind contributions by everyone they “buy” stuff from. It’s just excess demand, and it all gets paid for by the hidden tax that is inflation.
Even if we were bankrupt, there is no one capable of collecting. The absolute worst thing that can happen is people stop lending money, or stop purchasing the currency. This would be visible as inflation and rising bond interest rates. You’ll know the process is over if/when the currency hyperinflates.
This is happening gradually, but the world is an uncertain place and other options are just as bad. The US maintains a permanent trade deficit because it is secure and is a good place to invest.
Ultimately government debt isn’t real because money isn’t real. It’s not some fixed commodity circulating around that can truly experience supply and demand. It’s all an illusion.
The reason the effects on the US, of currency watering by the US, aren’t as bad as they could be is that most other countries are worse. Worldwide, the total effect is bad.
The loss of value of the value of the dollar is hard to pin down. It depends on what you compare it against. Circa 1793, the dollar was 1/20th a troy ounce of gold. By that standard, the dollar has lost 99.5% of its value. Fortunately other measures mostly aren’t that bad, maybe 95% loss is a fair estimate. What’s a good standard? Brute labor? The cost of enough moderate quality food?
My point is that it’s silly to deal with too small amounts of money. If a half penny was a reasonable minimum transaction 230 years ago, that might be equivalent to 10 cents today.
Whose fault is this? The primary villain is Richard Nixon, who put the final nail in the gold standard coffin. Succeeding Presidents/Congresses were then free to pillage. The first successful attack on the gold standard was FDR, who made private gold ownership illegal and then boosted the price, effectively stealing part of the money from those who sold their money to the government. Gerald Ford deserves a lot of credit for making ownership legal again.
How much did it cost to buy a TV in 1793?
You are correct… Kinda… Depending WHO you are taking about the value to.
The federal reserve pays face value for coins, so the mint eats most of the cost of a penny when minting a penny, but they make 20¢ on a quarter and 90¢ on a dollar coin. Where as the federal reserve gets a 1¢ coin for 1¢ so coins for them would be a break even proposition of it weren’t for the cost of handling and storage.
But then for paper money the Bureau of Engraving & Printing sells the fed money based on what it costs to create. So the federal reserve buys a $1 bill for 3¢ and a $100 for 10¢ then trades them to other banks for $1 and $100 respectively.
From the perspective of the mint pressing coins less than a quarter costs them money, and over a quarter makes them money.
For the Bureau of Engraving & Printing they get paid to make things and the Fed covers their costs, but they are making $100 bills and selling them for 10¢.
For the fed coins cost them money, but putting bills into circulation makes them money.
This is all before weird legislation for coinage gets involved and the mint pressed more dollar coins that we’d need for next 50 years back in 2011(ish).
Also interestingly The Mint, The Bureau of Engraving & Printing (bep), and the federal reserve are not funded by tax dollars. (Though the bep and mint are government agency the fed is mostly not a government agency, though some of it is).
They are all self funded, the mint by the sale of coins to the fed (and any profit they make is returned to the Treasury to pay down the national debt) the bep is also funded by selling the things they print (much of it money for the fed) and the Fed is funded by wacky little things like charging other banks $100 for a $100 bill they paid 10¢ for, as well as interest they charge banks at times and assets they hold on to (including, among other things, us bonds) and profit the Fed makes gets sent to the Treasury to pay down the national debt.
It really is a wacky system when you start digging into the minutia of it all.
Yes, when it all comes down to it any given item if currency should have more economic value over it’s life span than it cost to manufacture. And while I don’t have the numbers handy the penny has passed that point, so has the nickel, and the dime, and the quarter is within rounding distance. And it’s only getting worse with the decline of physical currency use. We can’t just stop having physical currency though… (Well maybe eventually, but it’s gonna have to be phased out approach).
Anyhow, your correct(ish) but it’s all from a certain point of view… And our monitory system is wacky!
Do you know that boar rider from Bleach, who has a clock on his back? I’m planning to make a figurine of him with the clock actually working. In theory I could make gears from pennies (what a funny world btw, you know). I could make a holder with a drill bit guide to drill a center hole. Then install a rod in it, spin it with “Dremel” like in a lathe to get a desired radius and finally make teeth with some holder for precise rotation and “Dremel” blade approach (maybe some pantograph), also DIY.
One of the great uses of a penny, in a bygone era, was to put it in the fuse box*. Of course, you had to have an “unhealthy disregard for your personal safety.”
(*A fuse box was the predecessor to the modern electrical panel or breaker box.)
I can think of a better way to “spend a penny”. I say bring back the mil and the 3 cent piece!
There was never a United States mil coin. U.S. small denomination coins no longer in circulation are half cent, two cent, three cent, and twenty cent. I have one each of the 1st three. I’d like to have a twenty cent piece, but they’re rare and expensive: >$200.
I have about 20lbs of pre-1982 pennies that my dad and I rolled up back in 1982. Still waiting for the day that they’re worth something. The coffee can of pre-1964 silver quarters that he collected in 1964 were worth something, but I don’t know what ever happened to them.
Shit. How will I work my Penny Racers now!?
Or penny loafers.
people can’t even walk because of this!
Three dimes, two nickels, one quarter, zero pennies.
I saw a then-old-now-probably-collectable kids-science book that showed how you could make a battery from copper pennies and silver dimes. Old = sometime in the 1950s or early 1960s.
For the non-Americans: The last mass-produced-for-circulation 90%-silver dimes ($0.10), quarters ($0.25), and half dollars ($0.50) were minted in 1964.
I appreciate the effort to reduce culture assumptions, but clarifying that a quarter is one quarter and a half dollar is half a dollar is funny to me.
Thanks :) Our coins have quite different names that simply reflect the value. 5c, 10c, 20c, 50c, $1, $2. We don’t use a 25 cent coin and I guess you don’t have a 20 cent.
The Nickel, Dime, Quarter naming is a little like threepence, Sixpence, Shilling, Florin, Half Crown of the old £sd system.
And we got rid of our 1 and 2 cent coins years ago now. The final bill after all taxes and charges, not the individual prices, is rounded up or down to the nearest 5c when paying cash. When paying card it’s left as is.
We tried the twenty cent coin but it was confused with the quarter and didn’t last long.
Over my life I’ve seen nearly an order of magnitude change in prices, dollar coins and that’s all?
I remember penny candy at the drugstore a few blocks away.
My bank will always count my change tray after I pack it up in a large plastic bottle. That is a free service they have with members.
The day of this news I was cashing a check at the bank and as the clerk drops the change on the counter we both spot a dark copper one roll out, a wheatie from ’45!
Post only for one of the 200+ countries in the world…
Some countries still use physical money apparently. Very handy for dem criminals..
No country has completely eliminated physical currency. A few eurostates can brag about being MOSTLY cashless but their still minting coins and pressing bills.
Handy also for protecting your privacy and anonymity against an overbearing surveillance state.
I have a coffee can full of cent pieces. I should go through them, filter out the 1982 or greater, check the pre-1982 for old ones, maybe keep one for every year just for grins and giggle. Then when I’m long gone and someone finds where I buried it in a thousand years, they’ll wonder what it is. :)
We may all be missing the objective here. If someone can find a way to economically separate the copper from old pennies they will have developed a New income stream.
We built a coin separator to discern silver quarters from modern base metal quarters by rolling them past a very large magnet. Could something similar be built to sort out pre-1982 pennies?
Yes. Many standard coin acceptors can be modified to separate copper pennies from zinc. I used to have such a setup at home.
Look at https://www.ebay.com/itm/134452685165 for example, though my setup certainly didn’t cost that much.
The going rate for zinc on eBay is about $6 per pound. I will miss it being sold by every bank for $1.71 a pound. Copper for $1.71 a pound is an even better deal, but that gets labor intensive these days.
Didn’t read all the comments so apologize if I’m repeating others..
Some things to do with pennies you have:
82 and older pennies? Use a drill and make a copper washer, when you NEED a washer and don’t have one it is useful to make one for 1 cent and a little time. They were useful also for our Christmas tree stand screws
Make buttons! Crafty and strong. Make jewelry! Make contact points for your circuit bent Casio SK-1 or speak&spell or whatever needs a copper contact..
I’ve melted them with aluminum or tin to make bronze (look it up and be careful to use “copper” pennies from ‘82 or older)
Might try casting a couple dollars worth and making a copper hammer head..
Newer pennies: you can make washers with too, but won’t hold up in acidic (?) environments due to galvanic reduction or zinc dissolving. Make hydrogen for fun using acid (careful -be safe). Make batteries as mentioned above, or make lemon batteries with an old penny and a new one (with copper sanded off). Can also diy some zinc flux by sanding a few new pennies, dissolving the zinc in acid and use the resultant liquid as flux (see “killed spirits”).
In high school, kids had learned to “flick“ pennies in a special way while snapping their fingers and whipping their wrist. The resultant movement would cause the penny to spin in flight and reach high velocity with great accuracy. Lockers would sometimes get dented..
I’ve added them as weight to epoxy for a spinner arcade controller. 🤗
Anybody else have some clever uses for pennies?
I’ll add another possible weird one.. ambience generator! (Using salt water copper and aluminum)
http://www.sparkbangbuzz.com/els/alsounds-el.htm
For older Brits reading this, spending a penny has a very different meaning
If you find one of the ‘coin pusher’ machines, a penny placed at the slot and flicked hard with a finger may fly thru the sizing rails and drop to the playing surface, allowing one to actually have a chance at making money from the machine.
I’m sure there are still a few guys like this around waiting to cash in their cache.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/10/28/man-cashes-pennies-hes-been-saving-45-years/74727160/