Steel Pennies?

Italy was using stainless steel for their coinge for a number of years.

It is very hard wearing for a circulating coinage, but it is also hard to strike. The relief on the Italian coinage was quite shallow, no doubt an indication of the hardness of the stainless steel used. I guess the shallowness of the relief was a way to extend die life. From the color the coins, the admixture of chrome and nickel must have been more than 10%. Cutlery stainless is 18% nickel and 8% chromium.

For coinage purposes, a very low concentration of nickel (say 1 to 2 %), in an otherwise pure iron for the core of a coin makes a little more sense to me. The rust problem is not entirely eliminated, but would proceed at a much slower pace, depending on conditions, and especially in the clad or plated core of a coin.

Steel is an alloy of carbon and iron. Natural colloidal carbon particles can be removed from molten iron by blasing air or oxygen through it, or by adding magnesium. If magnesium is used, a violent reaction takes place. Ductile iron is made in this way, and is used in the manufacture of ductile iron piping for water mains. Perhaps ingots of this material could be rolled and stamped into blanks for coinage cores.

Alright, here are some facts from 2010.

The US Mint's 2010 annual report is listed here:
http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_min...nnual_report

If you scroll down in the file and look on page 27, they mention a loss on the cent and nickel.

The penny (-$27.4) and nickel (-$15.2) coins were produced at a loss of $42.6 million.

The dime ($38.1) and quarter ($31.0) made $69.1 million profit.

So even if we don't include the dollar coin at all, they still make a slight profit. That doesn't even include any other items they sell that make a profit, so there is some buffer room for losses to increase before they lose overall.

We'll have to wait and see. Otherwise start a petition and write the US Mint and Treasury for a change. I don't see the cent being eliminated or even a study being done for at least another 2-3 more years. There are way too many bigger issues they need to work on, like cutting the federal budget by a trillion dollars.

Hopefully they have a 2011 report out in the next month or two.

I think that they should be steel

I think they should be eliminated. Instead of seeing if we can make this pocket lint out of something cheaper until we use bat crap, admit cents and nickels are more aggravation than they're worth.

I see Canada is making Loons and Toons out of steel soon

Actually, and as much as I gripe about it, I've seen relatively few rust problems with the steel plated coins here. It does happen, but usually after some ancillary damage has exposed the coins core. The nickel and underlying copper plate pretty much seal it up nice. I don't imagine they will ever be as durable as their solid alloy counterparts. The other downside is the strikes look like garbage.

I like steel cored cents better than zinc cents though.