Speculation On What The New Penny And Nickel Will Be Made Of

I believe the Mint is looking into changing the composition of all coins. I would like to see the penny eliminated and all the others coins going to plated steel.

And that is why Canada will no longer be making the cent later on this year.

Wow! That is a lot sooner than what they were saying a few months ago. Any idea on what the final mintage is?

The dime is a horrible denomination whilst the penny and nickel are still around. A child can plainly see this.

@JustCarl: Maybe you should come over to the "darkside". The debate here is precisely what you describe. We're paying massive of tax dollars on politicians who do nothing for us. We pay for their hotels, orange juice, limousines, etc. To add to that we even pay when royalty visits. I thought we were independant but we're not.

Fact is, these little coins WOULD have value and use in our monetary systems if we knew how to wisely spend them. There should be referendums on EVERYTHING.

100 per cent pure Zinc. Look at World War II coinage from around the world, and you have your answer.

@JSH, I'm not sure what he means either, and ironically, personally in my area, dimes are the smallest denomination that can actually buy something [a single penny candy, yes, penny].

Absolute bull.

Many states have sales tax rates like 6.125%. We've NEVER had a 0.125¢ piece, but they didn't jump from 5 to 10¢.

Property taxes are often numbers like 3.9 mills. There is legally a mill ($0.001), but no 0.9 mill.

If they had any sense, they'd eliminate the cent, nickel and dime. Paper and plastic payments would continue to the cent, coin transactions would be rounded.

I got a nice Siam chicken curry lunch for the animal and I (one of her favorites). The total was $7.77, I handed over a ten and got back two ones and a quarter. She could have given exact change, but why bother?

@wquinn pure steel would be even cheaper today, that'd be quite a retro trip to 1943! As long as nobody confused them with dimes [i.e was careful] and understood the copper was a necessary victim of budget cuts and the coin itself would eventually follow.

Also, the problem with getting rid of the nickel guys, is the quarter...

going from $ .10 to $ .25 is problematic because a 5 cent difference still exists in one coin, and remember, the Canadian nickel only costs about 3 cents to produce [it is a little thinner though] so it can still be profitable for the time being.