I was just thinking about this last night. Is it possible for the melt value of a penny to ever be worth more than $1? Therefore a penny literally being more valuable than one $1 US currency?
It would be a long, long, long, long, long...........LONG time before this would ever happen. The way I see, pennies will be long gone by the time this could happen.
Of course it's possible. The U.S. government could cease to exist one day and it's currency would therefore not be worth the paper it's printed on. Or, the U.S. government, in an attempt to curb a hyper-inflated dollar could just decide to issue a new currency. Thus, rendering the dollar as we know it nothing more than a historical relic. Paper currencies are only as valuable as the reputation of the government that is backing them at the time.
I just find it curious that if the price of copper continues to go up, that although the face value is 1 cent, the real value can actually be more than a dollar. It's almost laughable. I think I heard somewhere that because cotton has been going up, the costs of printing a $1 bill is more than $1. At least with coins they have tried to give us junk with silver coating so it at least can look like silver. But what are they going to do with dollar bills? Take out the cotton? Then what? It will literally be monopoly money!!
Ok here's food for thought. What is the current melt value of a quarter today? Is a quarter made of silver and copper? If so, does that equal a dollar or more?
Well, if a copper cent is worth around 3 cents at $4.50 copper, copper would have to climb to around... $135 for a cent to be worth a dollar. If you want to see what coins are worth right now... http://www.coinflation.com/unitedstates/
If Republicans and Democrats can't get over their petty BS and come up with a long-term debt solution, it's inevitable.
I'm wondering if our economy and way of life won't allow the price to get to that point? I'm not a doom and gloom guy but we might be finished before it gets there?