Do You Think We Will See The Penny Disappear?

I will worry with my computer and what to instal on it, you can worry about your own.




Since you asked and wanted information:

Each coin have a mass of materials. Each coin also has a production cost in employees etc outside of that. So if you assume the mass is directly relative to the materials cost, then you can figure out the cost of any coin size for that coin type. Take the production cost of ANOTHER coin type and you can figure the new coin size total cost.

So if you take the penny, make them into dime sized blank, you would know the cost per blank based on materials and assume the production cost (employees, dies, etc) of the dime for your new sized penny to figure its cost. Now since production cost comes in when dealing with a certain mintage, you can increase the mintage of the new dime-sized penny from the dime mintage to the prior penny mintage and know the cost for a dime-sized penny run at current mintages for the penny.

The only number I need now for this is the materials cost, AND the size of existing sheets/rolls that coins blanks are stamped from in order to see how many coins can be stamped from the existing materials rolls. Assume the cost of the waste where a coin blank could not be cut from the rolled sheet and you don't have to calculate too much waste into the new coin.

This way I can play around with the numbers to see what a dime-sized penny would cost, a penny-sized nickel, and a nickle-sized dime, for my own curiosity; using the most current available costs as last published.

Why am I doing or wanting to fo that? Because for MANY years USA has been one of very few, if not the only country, that does not have visually-impaired friendly coinage because the denominations are still relative to precious metal value of the coin as it was minted in silver. Ergo: a silver dollar contained $1 worth of silver in weight, a quarter 25-cents worth, and a dime 10-cents worth as opposed to being a larger coin for larger denominations. (Same with USA bills all being the same size with no consideration for the visually impaired also.) In other words, US currency and coins has always discriminated against the visually impaired and blind by not even taking them into consideration. SO, if the penny should "disappear" I would hope they would finally bring in line all coinage to make it so that higher denomination is a larger sized coin. (Which may be in part what the proposed removal of the nickel along with the penny that was mentioned recently was striving to do, but that was never mentioned in that bill.)

Any further questions as to the why or what information was wanted?

That makes a little more sense.

You are correct in that the size of small value US coins is not relative to the values, if they were it would seem to make more sense. There are historical reasons for this but the fact is that the government and business community do not want to change since the sizes and shapes are so entrenched.

Silver coinage was indeed size-to-value relative for the most part, right from the 3-cent and 5-cent silver coins to the dollar. The 5-cent coins was half the weight of the 10-cent coin and so on, with some minor variances here and there.

The cent, Half Cent and 2 cent copper coins were relative in weight to each other before the Civil War period.

Gold coin was also relative.

This made for 3 sets of weight-value ratios; gold, silver and copper. After the 5-cent nickel-copper coin came about it was on it's own except for a short time when the 3-cent nickel was around, so then we actually had 4 sets.

If the coin sizes/weights were all made relative to value now then we would either have very large coins at one end or very small ones at the other. I think what would be more reasonable is something similar to the Euro, with 2 series of coins. The smaller value coins in a copper color with unique shapes or edges and larger value ones in silver or bi-color, also with varying edges or shapes.

I doubt however we will ever see any real change other than perhaps the elimination of the cent. There are just too many people resistant to change and too many special interests to make real change possible.

what is the exact saying since I know I once heard it on Faulty Towers or Are You Being Served, but those no longer air. I only remembe the silly ones along with a penny saved is a penny earned, something about flip it over, and the change tray thing at cashiers about need a penny.




I agree, if they can reduce the cost of the upper coinage, then the cost of the lower will mean less, but at the same time the dollar coins are ending in 2016? I think first the dollar bill needs to become a coin and MAKE people accept that, then work on others. and the new 2017 dollar coin can be as you say with maybe a $2 coin with it like Canada and the Euro has.

Maybe if people were more responsible with their coins and thought better of them than the paper, there wouldn't be so many pennies "lost" and "disappearing" as is, and has been mentioned many times in the past.

the smaller funny shapes would let visually impaired people be able to coin the side of the edge, but doesn't the bimetallic coins also have something? like the 2 and 1 are the same size, but the 1 of one country is solid, and the 2 has a center ring you can fill and tell it is not a 1?

I am sue the 500 Italian Lire (now Euro) I have, had braille on it as well as the center part had a raised portion. Why can't US coinage put braille on it? Penny being the one that wouldn't ned it as the smallest denomination coin, then you get a washer instead you have gotten higher value than the penny itself, but it would be the one that wouldn't need it IF you were to pick 1 coin to leave it off of to reduce costs.

Heck, has the US ever had ay money with the visually impaired in mind? the reeds were there for sighted people to tell if silver was ground/filed off.

Yup.

A person with a penny may feel richer than one without but this is not the reality. A person with 25 pennies can actually buy a package of noodles where the one without can not but again the reality is different. Every penny made is a drag on the economy and a drag on commerce. Each time a penny is used we're all a little poorer. If a penny drive nets a charity $1000 without the penny a nickel drive would require less heavy lifting and net $1100. Without the penny noodles might cost five for a dollar. Scraping together four quarters requires less effort and weight than 125 pennies.

Eliminate the penny. Change the nickel to aluminum and introduce the dollar coin by removing the dollar bill. Once people realize how much better it is introduce the $2 coin and shrink the "nickel" until it can be made for less than 5c.

When inflation and governmental spending cause the aluminum nickel to be worthless then remove it and the dime and round to the nearest quarter. The economy will function more smoothly and we'll all be a little richer for it.

Maybe we should bring back the half-cent and introduce mill coins so we can make exact change for that exactly one gallon of gas purchased.

Maybe we can eliminate the cent and watch all our prices suddenly skyrocket because of it.

Meanwhile, back in real life...
Pennies are useless for any purpose other than making change. In order to make any substantial purchase with them you need a bunch of them. When I was a kid you could get a candy bar for 10 of them, now it take 75 or 80 of them. "Penny Candy" now costs a dime.

Eliminating the cent will not cause inflation, people will not become poorer because of it, the price of Ramen noodles will not change and the Earth will continue to revolve around the Sun. If you are so broke that you can only survive on Ramen noodles the elimination of the cent (and the nickel for that matter) won't change things for better or worse.

So true, and while we are firing those people that make the penny or cutting their salaries since they will be doing less work, shall we also strengthen the economy by getting rid of more jobs as well? Less start with libraries and just burn all those books for fuel to make electricity, then the librarians can be fired cause they are a drain on the economy since everything is easier to access in digital format. All that space wasted for storing books could be used for something better, like another bank?

@Canada...

Population:
035,749,600 Canada (8.3/sq mi)
321,605,012 United States (90.6/sq mi)
038,483,957 Poland (319.9/sq mi)

Lets just let that sink in, the comparison of Canada to the US and a country with near identical population as Canada...

100 groszy = 1 zloty, sounds like a penny to me 1/100 of the standard unit. They still have then, always had, make only about 300 million per year, and dont make them EVERY year, nor any other coin for that matter. Coins are only made when the supply starts to dwindle.

But the shear volume of people I would hope people would understand makes a difference in how the economy works and one 1*10th the size of your own cannot be looked at as an identical economy.

I think I said it in the past discussion, that would be a smart thing for the US to do, maybe even Canada? But there is 2 reasons coins are made EVERY year and not bills.

1: it keeps the workers employed (bills are made in a series from a design for a year, but the materials are made over time as they take longer.)
2: seigniorage. every coin (except nickel and penny) made bring in more than it costs. This means that overall the coins put out are ALL worth more than it took to make them ALL.

And that is the key thing, not micromanaging, but looking at the bottom line. $50 million save isn't going to do spit to the $X trillion deficit any time soon. How about those $2 billion bombers they churn out that sit on the tarmac or in hangers, and taken out for test flights to make sure they are working, costing how much in fuel?

making 1 less of those bombers would give 40 more years of the penny. (Yes I know costs are going up, but there is zinc and copper both used in the bomber as well the penny so under 40 years due to inflation, but that is still a LONG time.) Within 40 years the world economy will likely collapse anyway. So people will look during voting time at if someone is wanting to mess with an already unstable economy to mess with the coins more like silly State and ATBs and vote for someone that will do something productive like, pay cuts for politicians that are getting paid by lobbyists anyway.

I just think either way, the penny will be here for quite a while yet because removing it would be as productive as, well, tossing a penny into a wishing well. (you know those are collected, cleaned and spent/donated?)

How many of those "lost" pennies that were tossed into wishing wells went to St Jude's Children Hospital? Battered wives shelters? Homeless shelters? Abandoned/abused animal shelters? How many pennies are supporting those places and how much would be lost in those "coin jars"? The ones you see for March of Dimes, Muscular Sclerosis, etc? I most often see people either dump all their change when those things are in Walmart, or sort out the silver and drop in the rest... pennies.

Anyone have the number to breakdown how many pennies are put into such donation drives in relation to other coins/amounts?

Also, there are still plenty of Canadians that hate not having the penny and do not trust places with the rounding. Most I have talked to about it since 2012 would rather have the penny than the toonie. Then again, they prefer to use plastic over cash as well.

Pennies wont disappear until they pry them from my cold dead hands.

No, we just realize Canadian bacon is a sham...with the stress on the HAM part. Ham, perfect in a silver dollar biscuit.