Any ideas as to how much longer it will be before US mint starts producing nickel plated Steel or zinc coins for circulation?
Production prices for both the Cents and the Nickel are high than the face value of the coins. Last I heard (and that was a while ago) the Gov't loses $150,000,000 a year just from cent production.
I thought that was from when they used copper. But they are cancelling the penny in 2022 anyways, or so I heard.
Boy, I hope so. Cents are ridiculous. Many countries demonetize and get rid of almost worthless coinage. The USA needs to get with it. I know the argument about "rounding up" and consumers losing money, but I really don't believe that is a factor. How much will it change our standard of living if something costs $6.00 instead of $5.99? Steve
The old psycological thought about a price of, for example, 1.99 being seen as more financially attractive in the mind than 2.00 is still valid today. But there was another reason behind it. A lot of early supermarkets in the 60´s promoted it to minimise stealing by staff. They had to ring in a sale to get the one cent change for the customer, instead of pocketing the money from someone paying the exact amount on items priced in whole numbers
If the U.S. Mint does get rid of the penny that will probably make the pre-1982 Copper Lincoln's popular, and for certain dates and mint marks more valuable also, I hope! Time will tell.
I highly doubt that. The mintages on some of the Lincoln memorials and even a few wheats are so incredibly high that even if you melted 99% of the original mintage, there would still be more than enough to go around.
As I've stated before, hopefully the U.S. Mint will, for once, think clearly and continue to produce mint state and proofs of cents and nickels for collectors only, thus actually making money and still continue the Lincoln and Jefferson coin legacy. If they have to do the same thing for dimes, so be it. In my opinion, Canada blew it by not producing cents for collectors only. Perhaps they don't have as many collectors as we do in this country.
It's closer to $50 million. I don't have the figure for 2020 at my fingertips but the loss in 2019 was $73 million and 2018 was $86 million. 2018 was the largest loss they have had on the cents. The loss on the 5 cent piece was $30 million and $34 million respectively. greatest loss on the five cent was $57 million in 2011. The cent and five cent pieces have now been produced at a loss for 15 years. Probably a long time, they have had a committee studying this problem for 9 years now trying to find a metal or alloy that would allow the cent and five cent to be made for less than face value. But part of the requirements is that it be able to fe introduced seamlessly so it can co-circulate with the existing coins with no or minimal cost/disruption to people and machines that handle coins such as vending machines, be as durable as existing coins, and strike up well. They have identified a possible alloy for the five cent piece,but it is not quite ideal, and would only be a stop gap measure because it would only reduce the cost to 4.9 cents apiece. The cent is an impossible task because no matter what the material is the actual manufacturing cost not including materials is 1.1 cents apiece. You would need a material whose producer would PAY the Mint to take it. (Pay them to take about 22,000 TONS of it per year.) This committee has published a report on this study every two years, each time with no results, and each time apparently reviewing the same materials (What was that definition of insanity again?) So far this study has cost the taxpayers about $16 million.
