Do You Miss The Penny In Canada?

The odd time I may get one in a lot of coins, but I would just give them to a charity. There is no point confusing sales clerks.

After 4 years without them, I realize that they were just a pointless bother.

Not really, nobody really cares and as a added bonus, almost all stores round down.

with AgCoinAu. That would be quite sensible. But with our fiat money, a radical change like that might make the public lose some confidence in the whole system and have an adverse effect on the economy. Change to our change has to be done slowly and incrementally.

I don't miss plated cents. The pure copper cents sometimes had lovely luster.

Anyone familiar with Canadian and US cultures will understand the statement I am about to say.

To me it makes sense the Canadians would round down. However, I cannot see this being the overall attitude in the States.

I love my home country, but will tell you from considering Canada a second home all my life that the Canadian economy and people have a much better ethic of still being concerned about giving quality when someone buys from them. Down here the majority of businesses want to take people for a ride. This is less true with private merchants down here.

Note I understand there are problems on both sides.

But just an example to back this up. My wife and I used to shop in Canada for situations siuch as the following.

We went to Walmart in St. Catherines, ON to buy a certain film when it came out. The price in Canadian money was 15.00. The same video in the US was also priced 15.00.

Sounds fair right? Wrong. The Canadian dollar at the time was such that I only paid the equivalent of US $10.00 to the Canada Walmart store.

Since the Walmart in Canada was making a profit from the film by charging the equivalent of US 10.00 for it, my local Walmart was not only making the same profit the Canadian store, but my US store would get US 5.00 on top of that profit.

It was awhile ago now, but we used to visit a nice restaurant Toronto where I would get two lobsters for equivalent of 16.95 US - when in the States the best price I ever found was 20.00+ for just one.

So if we get rid of pennies, I see little towns maybe rounding down, but I fear it would not be the norm. And I also believe if we started to use the dollar coin, then the greed down here would prevail and all of a sudden everything would be at least a dollar.

Earle, I am in the import/distribution business, and deal with both Canadian and American business. Your statement is true to the one point of the cost to the consumer, however what the average consumer does not see is the inherent costs to import items into each country is different.

That same video for example may have a duty of only 5% in the USA and in Canada it is 18% (these are not real figures but examples)

Also I don't know where John100 lives but he must live in the friendliest, nicest town, becasue over in the Metro Vancouver area everyone rounds as they should.

14 yes votes, They Must be from the US Members

Don't really miss the 1 cent coin at all but like most collectors, I kept 2 rolls of the 2012 magnetic and non magnetic coins for sentimental reasons.

Anyone know how many have been melted down so far? I thought I read some stats awhile back and can't find them.

and no.
But I don't live there