green18

No....

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coleguy

I don't see how so...they're still money valued at their stated denomination. But, more importantly, what does that have to do with the topic at hand?
Guy~

yakpoo

The topic at hand is whether or not to retire the penny. If the valuation of the penny is less than the needs of Commerce, then it should be retired...(imho).

I lived in South Korea from 1986 to 1991. When I got there, you could still find 1 and 5 won coins...you could buy an egg for 5 won. When I left, the lowest denomination in circulation was 100 won.

The South Korean's adjusted their currency to meet commercial needs. Why don't we do that in this country when coins lose their commercial value...as has the penny?

mrz1988

I personally think they should toy with mintage numbers before completely eliminating it. I've always liked the penny and played around with them since I could walk. They are great in helping little kids learn to count and are great for collecting. You don't need to bring hundreds of dollars to the bank to search a massive amount of cents, which keeps me interested. I say cut mintage in half, and let demand for the coin determine when it goes extinct. When the demand is nothing but a trickle and shops are rounding to the nickel for sheer convenience, drop the penny. If cost is too high to produce them, change the metal content!

After all, Russia still has a 1 kopek coin, worth only around $0.0004!

AlexN2coins2004

all I gotta say is if a product now costs a penny and then costs a nickel with the loss of the penny I think I just lost 4 cents add that up say 10 times a day that's 40 cents a day and say 365 days a year it's $146.00
I personally would not want to lose that much money for the sake of thorwing the cent out the window I say just make it out of something cheaper then it's cost or say screw it and keep it

how much money does the government waste anyways compared to amount lost from minting cents it's probably like a cent in a 5 gallon bucket

p.s. if the penny costs so much why not just let the profits the mint makes off all the products it's sells pay for it or past the cost on to banks since we have to pay fee after fee anyways...

jallengomez

Nice case of wealth-envy here.

yakpoo

I hear this a lot...that, as consumers, we'll somehow get financially screwed if the penny goes away.

Merchants will do what merchants have done for thousands of years
...adjust the amount of product they sell to match the currency.


Side Note...

The "Yes" vote was winning 2-1 when I started giving my opinions. Now the "No" votes are in the lead. I guess I have to know when to accept defeat and go to sleep.

bqcoins

Do what now?! Once you eliminate the cent from daily life, i.e. stop releasing it into the open market it ceases being something useful. Therefore it has no place in a collectors set. It becomes a joke like the kennedy half. Who really wants to collect something for the sake of collecting it. Hoarders, thats who, only people that hoard it. The day the Kennedy half stopped entering the market was the day my album of Kennedy's ended, because they weren't "real" money anymore. They could have no more history, backstory, real collectability. So the day they stop releasing the cent into the market for daily commerce is the day the cent dies. There should be no more cents produced after that point. Think about it, the half cent went away due to inflation (partly anyway) and they didn't continue making them for collectors. Same should be said for the cent, and the half dollar for that matter.

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Sometime Numismatic Consultant
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yakpoo

Ahhh...the refreshing sound of Common Sense.

abe

No, how about a nice case of the truth. Look around. Then again some people can't handle the truth...

danfierce70

Cuz they're actually aliens bent on taking over the world, starting with our table scraps. They won't eliminate us, though, because we invented the perfect thing to twart them: the doorknob.

In other news: I voted no, just on my own gut feelings. I'm no economist, nor have I had the "pleasure" of ever taking such a class, but my fear is that it will cause a huge jump in inflation.

SirCharlie

I vote no to completely getting rid of it, but perhaps it would have been a good time to end the Lincoln series on the 100 year anniversary, and perhaps even better yet, end it on the same note it began by mint very few 2009 s-vdb coins like the 1909 s-vdb, and not tell anybody until they were out and discovered. That way would give everybody a chance to get out there and find them, and nobody could hoard the 2009 rarities. Surprise!

abe

Thats exactly what should've happened to this series. well said:

RUFUSREDDOG

When the Single cents goes away so will the concept of the single cent.

The nickel will follow soon after.

All spending will be though of "to the next tenth".

But the subversion has already begun. Just look at your computer keyboard folks. Anybody got one with a "Cent" icon on it?

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scottishmoney

The fascinating paradox of the cents now is that they are worth considerably less than the half cent coins were when they were eliminated in 1857. In fact, cents today are worth less in purchasing value than mill denominated tax tokens of the 1930s and 1940s.

Actually the lowest coin denomination that has some relative value really is the dime. Even nickels lately have cost more than they are worth to produce.

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