The RCM May Not Care, But I'm Throwing In The Proverbial Towel.

ha-ha!!

I'm sure they'll get to it yet.

I mean they are commemorating Americans on our coinage... for weak-sauce Canadian tie-in's...

it needs to wholly "painted" too!

The RCM job is to create a cost effective mildly secure coins for us and many other countries, even the US has switiched to their forms of plated or sandwich coins to save mpney at least we are not using aluminum planchets. Remember around the bird series almost nobody accepted the 100.00 notes, now everyone seems to be okay with the poly notes, the BOC poly notes seems to have solved the most important problem, most of the world is slowly moving this direction. The BOC was doing poly tests with Duranotes in the bird series, but they waffled on cost and as result another two series of paper counterfeits

I agree,the black toonie was nice,and I couldn't wait to get one for myself.

I also agree it could have been darker, all the press on this coin present it as being MUCH darker than it really is - but I'll take a slightly lighter toned finish over another printed face any day.

Yup,the USA have been doing plated coins for a long time, and they seem to be doing some better, becasue almost from "go" we (as in collectors) were finding plating issues abounding.
Also, if the worlds largest economy decided to make it's currency of cheaper base material, they are in a prime position to do so;
We on the other hand are not the economic super-power that they are... and they still have "paper" notes,and the penny.
When economies like Turkey can still do penny sized copper coins of small denomination, we should be able to as well... we are supposed to - but that's a whole different rant.

I think in large part, the RCM is making a joke of our currency.
So I'm done.

Personally I lost interest in RCM when circulation coinage didn't have silver in it any more. I understand why they did it, but for whatever reason that is my break point. I know a lot of folks religiously buy the various sets the mint puts out each year along with a horde of NCLT products, but I honestly don't get it at all. In the end though I figure each to their own. If folks enjoy spending hundreds or thousands on relatively mass produced items for their own personal satisfaction and enjoyment then more power to them. Those people keep the RCM in profits every year. The thought of paying many times silver value for all the various and sundry items they put out every year makes me cringe. That's what silver maple leaves are for I think! Some also say that it's art and very, very occasionally I see something that makes me almost think that, but then they make thousands and thousands of them and I lose interest pretty fast. Again, each to their own. Live and let live and all that. :)

Correction, the government didn't save anything.

As I have understood it,the government put's in orders for what currency the mint is to manufacture and distribute - they (in theory at least) pay face value;
It was the mint that was complaining that the penny was costing more than a cent to make, and this was brought up by the seated government at the time.

The mint answers to the government, but is still in essence a business which operates independent from government budgets - it operates wholly as an independent business.

For the record, I don't actually believe the mint ever created circulation coinage which costed on par with,or above face value;
I believe that the mint skewed the facts in their favour to ditch the penny, but were always able to manufacture them at less than face - which is why they would alternate between zinc and steel cores after moving away from copper.
Essentially in arguing to kill the penny, the mint just shifted away from less profitable coinage, to focusing on more profitable coinage.

It is easy to cite the cost to make a penny from zinc when the cost of zinc goes up - while having shifted to steel core coins.
All base metals fluctuate with the market.

I believe that during the debates which turned favour against continuing to make a penny, it was suggested that it costed "1.2" or "1.3" cents to make a penny.

But like I said, I think the facts were being presented in a skewed manner that suggested it was actually costing the mint this amount to manufacture, when in fact this was a theoretical cost if the mint hadn't been able to shift back and forth between base materials to adjust for market fluctuation of material.

Another way to present this is to say that when the cost of zinc (to manufacture the cores) went up, they stopped purchasing zinc.