The "new" penny is just awful

1) Inferior metal composition
There are so many corroded pennies on the streets nowadays with literal chunks of the coin missing due to the thin copper over zinc core

2) The poor reverse
The shield is just stupid. It's boring. The Lincoln Memorial was better. Or maybe we could use the wheat design again?

Thoughts?

 

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Thoughts?
1) It's taken you 37 years to start complaining about the composition?
2) It's taken you 9 years to start complaining about the design (although it should be mentioned that this a marked improvement over #1)?

 

Spend those shield cents quickly before they evaporate

 

Okay, I'll ask:

Who cares?

not me

 

This.

As for the shield being boring, you're comparing it with two stark, very geometric wheat stalks surrounding a bunch of lettering and a rectangular building with columns on it. What makes the wheat reverse work is the fact that it's artistically coherent. The shield reverse is not. The shield itself implies curvature that is not matched by the way EPU is set. The colors of the shield are not represented correctly with heraldic hatching (horizontal stripes for blue, vertical for red, plain for white). The banner looks too stiff, and the boldface computer font reinforces that. The font for USA doesn't go with any of it.

 

As with many other things, Larry Niven thought of it first: The Roentgen Standard!

Zincolns aren't quite as toxic as nuclear waste, but they are hazardous (releasing corrosive and toxic salts as they decompose), and they do have something very much like a half-life.

Perhaps the Mint should just embrace the concept more fully, and monetize foil-wrapped chocolate coins. Sure, they're a little more fragile than Zincolns, but at least they're only toxic to pets and rodents, not people. And when it comes to "intrinsic value", they're superior even to silver and gold: if worse comes to worst, you CAN eat them!

 

The wheat back reverse would be WAY COOL.
Just think about what a stir that would cause with ALL the collectors new and old.
You should drop that in the comments box at the mint.
Great Idea.....

As a side note it might even cut down on the PLASTIC shield back cents in rolls.

 

They are a type of garbage.

 

I did put "new" in quotations marks.

 

I see the shield different too most people. I see the shield as history.
Just as Lincoln saved the Union during the civil war - the shield represents a symbol to the save union during the civil war.
So the portrait of Lincoln and the Shield are a perfect match to the history of the Civil War.

 

Sure, agreed! It's just that it's a real awful design and implementation of that symbolism.

 

Mine has Bezo Rocks on the shield instead of E PLURIBUS UNUM. Is that an error? How much is it worth?

 

I prefer the shield to the building. The composition still makes this coin near worthless, however.

 

I like the shield design but I’m Canadian so there is that. At the very least... at least you still have a penny/1cent piece to collect. We’re building a border wall out of our retired copper and zinc. It’ll only be chest high as we don’t want to offend our American cousins too much, but, yeah...

 

I think the zinc cent is really neat — the self-destructing coin.

 

True . . . if one deems these pieces of junk to be worth collecting. I don't.

 

Hey, man. Dampen the buzzkill... I gotta fill out my Dansco page with Shields up to 2027.

 

Yep. You know, I never liked people telling me that precious metals are "real money." Gold and silver only have value because people assign value to them (just like fiat money!). But food... ah, there's a difference! You can EAT it and keep yourself alive. That's closer to that odd concept of "real money" in my opinion.

 

How can you compare real works of art (Wheat & Memorial) to the design equal to that of a 6th grader?

Smart people were complaining about the Zinc Cent before it was in circulation. There is some very ugly money in circulation, Zinc Cents, as it can't hold up to the use it receives.

How long has this been going on? Did you just wake up and notice this? Why complain now?

The saddest thing about all this is not the meaningless boring design, it's not the lowgrade metal being used to mint cents nor is it that it has taken you this long to notice and speak up. It's the fact that our government has no plans to change the design or the composition of the Cent.

 

I agree. As a metal detectorI find dozens of “stinkin’ zincolns” every day. I throw them into a container with plans of sending them to the Federal Reserve to swap for better tender.

On a personal note, I find it disgraceful that our coinage seems so inferior to that from other countries. I have yet to find a foreign coin, here or there, that is in such sad shape.