The government spending years redeeming, exchanging and refining these cents is a waste of time and money. The simple solution is to set a firm redemption date of six months for people to turn in their cents. After that the cents should be invalidated and unable to be redeemed. This is similar to what Europe did when they went to the Euro in 1999. If the Canadian government had any sense, they would do the same and be done with them.
Hmm, not quite. First, while the euro was introduced in Jan-1999, it took three more years until the cash came. More importantly, it is up to each euro area country if the old coins have a fixed redemption period (and which one) or not. In some member states they can be redeemed "forever". However, and that sounds like a good idea to me, you need to send the to the central bank, or take them to a branch office. Commercial banks are not involved here. Also, it would have been a brilliant idea to have some rounding rules. In the euro countries that allow rounding (FI, NL) there are regulations which state that you need to round up/down cash totals to x.y0 or x.y5, whatever is closest. My guess is, the Canadian government simply does not expect many people to get their pennies redeemed ... Christian
Actually there is no reason to set up an "official" redemption. As cents come into the central banking facility they are simply not shipped back out. Since cents are pretty much a one way circulation coin, from the mint to the consumer to the change jar, relatively few will be coming back. And as people see fewer of them or hear that they have been discontinued, the rumors will start "that they are going to be rare someday" and the public will will assist in causing them to disappear into hoards and NOT be returned to the banks. If they don't come back, they don't have to be redeemed. This cuts costs. Sure some will eventually come back, but most will be held for a long time which is basically a long term interest free loan to the government. And once they are out of circulation you can remove the melting ban and many will be melted by private business and the government will never have the expense of redemption. (On the down side private industry will get the copper cents and the relatively few that do come back to the government will mostly be the Zincolns.) The reason Canada is doing an active recall campaign it they are trying to buy a bunch of cheap copper, but that works best if the percentage of copper cent in circulation is still high. (So you can get a bunch before it goes into hiding.) In the US the percentage is already down to around 20% so an active recall would acqure more zinc than copper and negate the profit margin.
Where do folks come up with some of the baloney in the linked article anyway? A half mad attempt at pointing out specific costs with eliminating the cent in an attempt to get the cent reinstated? ALL of the figures presented are normal operating costs which are absorbed over a very long period of time. Conders reply makes the most sense as the exact same thing occured when silver was eliminated form circulating US Coinage. There are billions of 90% sil;ver coins just waiting. For what I have no idea but they are out there because some day, the WILL be rare. Oh jeez............
