Nickels And Dimes, This Bothers Me.....does It Bother You?

Pointer #6: This was my first post. Turned out to be an R-7 (or R-5) variety I sold for $760.

this reminds me of a Yogi Berra
quote that made me smile
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/q...a106829.html

Hilarious video!

Just thinking.....Considering the cost to produce the penny was the justification for it to be discontinued, rather than breaking tradition and reducing the size, perhaps in the future that same reason will become the cause to banish the nickel as well? While I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I don't think the government likes people to be reminded of the constant erosion of the value of currency and in reality, even now 5c has no more spending value than did the penny. Nor really does the dime, for that matter. In the times these decimal coins were first minted, each had real purchase power. By that I mean that items were sold for 1c, 5c, 10c and so on, that is not the case any longer.

losing the 5 cent piece would mean you would loose or gain a lot of money with transactions because of rounding.

I read an article suggesting that big box stores purposely price their items so that when the total (with taxes)rings up at the register, you always have to round up. For larger stores, this equates to millions per year. I purposely give myself 2 cents extra in gasoline whenever I'm paying cash now. Makes up for the money I'm giving to Walmart and Home Depot every year.

Yes, in terms of rounding up or down, just as you suggest indeed the consumer holds the power. .

But to comment on what you read about intentional rounding up, regardless if the penny was discontinued, the Big Box stores can easily raise ALL their prices a cent or more to increase their profits by multimillions any time they choose. In fact they do it all the time and nobody hardly blinks an eye. So there's no valid reason they'd need to strategize about rounding up regarding the cash purchaser considering the sale price of goods is in their control. That theory would only apply perhaps in a fixed price environment. But not to get off topic......

Doing away with the penny just reduced the time for cashiers to give you change and ease the already inability for them to do subtraction in their head. In the past, the sizes of coins make it easier to see what your fingers are feeling in your tight pocket... and still do for blind or nearly blind folks. I still have a hard time even seeing the difference between a nickel and a quarter in my hand. Historically, the size of coins always had a direct correction to what the metal in them actually was worth. The early Brit pennies (before 1798) had their size directly equal to how much the copper (and size) was worth... that's why the 1797's were HUGE.

Well....

Part of the reason is actually tradition, but it has much more to do with practicality. When silver became too expensive to use for 10c, 25c, 50c and $1 (and copper for the 1c and nickel for the 5c) coins they switched to base metals that had similar weights and electromechanical properties to allow machines to discern them. Changing the size and color would cause consternation amongst the populace and, even worse, the vending industry.

Changing to nickel, then to steel for the "silver" coins and from copper to zinc then steel for the cent etc. was done to make the coins affordable to manufacture, have a similar appearance and feel and work in machines. It is for that reason that nickels are quite large and heavy compared to dimes that are twice their value. It is also why the cent was copper plated until they got smart and abandoned it.

Drastic changes to the size and appearance to coins has to be done carefully. In the case of the new smaller dollar coin in the 80's it was easier because the older nickel dollar was almost never used anyway. Introducing the Loonie was a no-brainer and soon the nickel ("silver") dollar was all but forgotten. I am sure the same thing happened in the 20's when the silver 5c coin was replaced with the nickel, although the US had had a similar coin for decades.

During the 20's Canada also finally followed the US in replacing the old large Cent coin with a smaller copper one, I suppose since it was the same as the US it was less of a shock.

Canada seems more willing to change coinage (and currency) to reflect reality than the US is. Perhaps the nickel will be the next coin to be dropped and prices can be rounded to the nearest dime, but that brings up a whole other set of questions with the 25c coin...