What If The Penny Was Discontinued?

So... have any Canadians missed their one cent coin yet?

I miss our pennies!

Looking at the 100 combinations of change, I get per 100 cash transactions and average of:
100 pennies
40 nickels
76 dimes
150 quarters

Now, doing rounding to eliminate the penny, I get:
40 nickels
80 dimes
150 quarters

So getting rid of the penny would seem to have no real impact on the usage of the other coins.

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Get rid of the nickel too?
200 dimes and 100 quarters. If half dollars cost no more than 2x as much as a quarter, might make some "cents" to use them more? Then 200 dimes, 0 quarters and 50 half dollars.

Dime and 20 cent piece? 50 and 200 respectively. Add in the half dollar, 40/80/50 [and you'd never need to get more than 3 total (<$1) coins in change]

What a waste that the half dollar is no longer used! People are just so ignorant about having a slightly heavier wallet. To compromise we should give it a slightly smaller size like 28 mm so it is still not confusable with the quarter. Maybe this effort would cause the denomination to catch on. This may happen in the near future, as the vending machine business will eventually have to raise prices due to inflation, and since the quarter will be worth less than before, the half dollar will be an easy alternative.

There is no reason whatsoever to alter the size of the half dollar, since it weighs the same as two quarters.


Regarding the original topic, kill the cent immediately. The only reason why we mint billions of them each year is because we throw away billions of them each year (whether it be into trash cans or change jars). If they were really that necessary for commerce, they would circulate with much greater regularity. They do not.

For the collectors, keep them in mints sets as we already do with half dollars and dollars.

Roll hunters, adapt! Nickels, dimes, quarters, half dollars, and dollars are your friends.

By the way, young collectors today can get rolls of nickels easier than the cent rolls I scraped and saved for as a kid. Thank you, inflation.

Congress is incompetent. That is all I can say without taking this thread irreversibly off-topic.

Yes, if the cent was needed after all it would be used and more widely circulated instead of sitting in change jars and landfills. jbuck.

If the cent was canceled, I would definitely switch to nickels and search for some buffs. However, I do hope that the cent's canceling would happen after the Wheat penny became scarcer. My lifetime goal is to complete as much of the series as possible from circulation until they are all but gone in rolls.

And also, congratulations for the Red Sox! Boston Strong everybody! Wooo!

why? the mint is the reason that congress couldn't get rid of the cent so far. they refused to stop making it.

congress can make the law ridding the cent, but the Pres has to sign it into law (School House Rock taught me this).

the mint and BEP answer to the Dept of Treasury which answers and reports to the PRes.

it isn't jsut up to congress to get rid of it, it has to pass other approval too iin the government and then in the populace as well.

right now, messing with with the US money at all, would be the career death of any politician especially after the recent economic debacle.

until the deficit and such is all fixed, nobody can risk alienated the public if they want votes. there are bigger fish to fry than the cent right now.