In for a penny, in for a nickel too!

What ever happened to that argument a long time ago to eliminate penny's from our money supply and round everything up to the nearest 5?

 

Here is an interesting bit on the subject from the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago....

Managing Change:
Is the Penny Worth Keeping?

 

Way back in the '80s, military bases in Germany had eliminated the penny. Everything was rounded to the nearest nickel: it worked fine. Here in Dubai everything is rounded to the nearest 25 fils (about a nickel) and it works fine here too.

 

Military bases around the SE Asia area don't really use pennies or any other coinage for that matter, occasionally you will get some but not very often. For change they give 5,10 and 25 cent "gift certificates", the cashiers will usually round whichever direction to the closest .05

 

Pretty soon 'money' wil be all-but gone in lieu of cash cards.

I pay NO bills by check or cash anymore, it's all online, the only things I use cash for I can use a card on: gas, groceries, movies and entertainment, dining out, I just don't like the idea of using plastic (in whatever form) for 'everything'.

On the other hand, kids need cash...

 

Let the hoarding begin.

Brother, can you rub a spare pair of wooden dimes for your thoughts?

 

I think that would put a whack on the underground economy.

 

Don't forget all the 'lost' change, and don't forget all the money in collector's hands, I know I have 5 each of all of the state quarters - those are out of circulation 'forever'.

 

You are the poster boy for that whole scam: "Let's get everybody in the country to take 50 quarters out of circulation!" And you've gone them one better, or four better as it were. Those coins will never be worth anything.

Sorry to have to be the one to break it to you. If it makes you feel any better, Mrs Dubai got in on the craze when we visited two years ago. I'm too chicken to tell her, so you get the bad news in lieu. Sorry mate!

 

the gov't loves the interest free loans. same with the post office.

 

at a 1 cents spread, how many pennies to a need to smelt to make a profit ?

 

My consulting firm is doing storm water runoff studies and future pollution abatement planning for a large scrap yard. The owners profits are staggering.

 

So lets assume you did melt down pennies and nickles. How could it be determined that they were, in fact, US currency and not old copper pipes from plumbing or such? Not that I plan on melting down my $100 penny collection in the hopes to double my money and retire--but seriously. How would they know? And who is "they"?

There are plenty of metal recyclers in my area. I can bring them old cast iron radiators and pipes and they weigh them and give you cash.

 

Ah, the lazy consumer.

We've gone wholesale to electronic transactions so we don't have to do math -- 16.37 is .... a ten, a five, a one, a quarter, a dime and two pennies ... oh heck, charge it!

And then there's the vanishing "change purse" -- an unfortuate name, as macho men don't carry "purses". So digging in your pocket for pennies is time consuming.

And then there's perceptional pricing: $19.95 isn't quite $20, right? -- until you add sales tax, and then using cash gets you a lot of change that winds up on your dresser.

So: get a change purse and start paying with exact change?

How many register jockeys would have to count on their fingers to figure out how much you gave them? At a 7-11 once during a power outage, the clerk wouldn't accept exact change without the register to add up the two items for him.

The cost of lower education.

One odd thing: Back in the '70s, a standard computer program exercise was to compute the change for any given amount. (Enter a figure, and the program prints out the number of bills and coins of each type. With correct plural syntax, of course.) But even today, registers don't have this feature.

But I worry about that term, "rounding tax": The cynic in me thinks that some button sorter has figured a new way to tap the economy: charge merchants a percentage of the "round up". Money for nuthin.

 

Ok I am a nerd but I actually started dividing my pennies back in 1990!! Any made before 1982 in one jar, the rest with the rest of the change.

I now have over 600 lbs of all copper pennies in my basement.

 

what are the salvge yards currently paying for a lbs of copper ?