Uh Oh! Will The US Cent Go Bye-Bye As Well. OH The Horror!

You are probably right, the solution is increase prices and the number of collector offerings.

Wrong.

If you want to round up, fine, you do that. I will round down because I know I still come out with more profit than if it had been an electronic transaction (because I have to pay the bank a processing fee for those).

I will make sure your customers know that you are ripping them off and that I am not.

Home Depot Canada rounds down. How long do you think Lowe's Canada would get away with rounding up?

By the way, rounding cash sales down already happens in my area.

jbuck - my point is the prices today as you note don't reflect the rounding - the rounding is done at the register. In a few months, all the products prices will be rounded up before the price lists are displayed.

a monopoly on copper is the plan, on a world wide scale ... - it's not the elimination of the 1 cent, it's the elimination of firearm casings, and a strict environmental ban on copper,zinc and nickel refining.

Will pennies still be in change? Or is the government going to pull them out? I don't see a point in keeping them. They not really that great. Nothing you can buy for a cent. You must spend a quarter or more to buy something.

That makes no sense, because adding sales tax will change the total, which will no longer be rounded to the nearest nickel or dime.

One more thing on rounding. The Canadian mindset is different in issues concerning money. I find that in Canada, there still is some personal pride taken to try to give a good product for a good price. A lot more of the US mindset is to milk the public for all they can get. So I personally think its a mistake to believe that since Canadian businesses are giving the consumer the benefit of rounding, that US businesses would follow suit.

Some of the things I could relate would really surprise you. And I know this concept is not an absolute, but from extensive time in Canada, I have experienced a refreshing lack of overall greed in Canada.

I have little faith that US businesses (unless Mom and Pop) would not round up to their advantage. Just b/c Canada does something does not mean the States will. If you want a good example of this mindset difference, Google the story of the guy who walked a tightrope over Niagara Falls last July. The mindsets of the two countries involved in the whole ordeal spell it out pretty plain where money came into the picture.

From my experience where minor coins have been withdrawn, the rounding proces is competely forgotten within six months.
Life just went on completely unaffected.

As a collector there is something truly sad about the potential loss of the penny, however, the rise of inflation and production costs require us to assess whether continuing to make it makes sense.

I was in South Africa right after they stopped production of the 1 and 2 cent pieces, and they seemed to be getting along fine. They rounded up if it was 5-9, and down if it was below (if you paid cash) much the same way Canada is doing.

With all that said, we Americans do tend to be a pretty hard-headed bunch, so any change like this is sure to cause lots of people to be upset (probably the same people who say we need to reduce our government spending).