Should the US make pennies from plastic?

Given the fact that the cent has become virtually worthless, costs more to make and distribute than its face value and no vending machines I know of (except vintage arcade machines and cent elongators) will accept it anymore, is it time to switch over to injection molded pennies?
The cost of each such coin would be miniscule and high quality injection molding can be used to make an esthetically acceptable coin.
What say you?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

No.
I think they should stop making them.
Instead, retailers could make their own 1 cent trade tokens to be given as change if they want. If they don't want to, they could just round off.

 

+1. Or bring back the stamp and book system that would win prizes like back in the day.

 

It would take longer than a year to make the 300-400 million injection molded cents that commerce demands today. To develop new technology to get around that would cost more that it would to just continue making them of zinc and copper.
Guy

 

They should get rid of the penny and just round up or down to the nearest 5 cents. I think there is a military base or something somewhere in the world that does this.

 

Should the US make pennies from plastic?


Sure, since they never made any before, in any metal or plastic.


Are they minting for Great Britian now?

 

Worthless? Pfftt.. people like me are dumb enough to buy two rolls from the Mint for $8.95, I'd say they're making plenty of money from making pennies.

 

Oh no, here come the semantics police!

 

Yes they do it in Germany at the bases. Hardly saw a penny.

 

I used to work in an injection molding facility making water drip irrigation systems. The 10 machines were popping out over half a million drippers each, per week, and that's with 2 people running and maintaining the machines. If the Mint were to begin such a process, they would have a few more than 10 molds running, and a few more than 2 employees running them. A proper set-up of machines on a U.S. Mint budget could easily surpass that number, yearly. Not to mention the nearly, non-existent maintenance costs. Hot, melted plastic doesn't do a whole lot of damage against aluminum molds. Most of the recycled/scrap plastic from the U.S. goes to and comes from the middle east, all the way to India. Not to mention the costs of melting metals v.s. melting plastic with an auger. 3 or 4 properly trained mold technicians can probably take care of the whole plant. The way they're getting around the technological costs is to wait for the private sector to figure out all the bugs. :thumb:

The biggest problem I see with this idea is the deminishing value of our dollar. Not only is our dollar going down in market terms, but, as we've all heard, it's not even worth the paper it's printed on! Not only are they getting rid of the actual vs percieved value, they're removing incentive to physically store your money. Who is going to put away a milk jug of ******* plastic cents!? On the other hand, copper has had known value for over 8,000 years.

Hmmm, do y'all want your value in copper/nickel/silver/gold/platinum, or plastic and bank accounts?


On a side note;
Does anyone think the push for plastic money is partially due to diminishing relations with China, and a much larger issue of Europe/Canada taking control of mining in South America, as well as our tattered relationship with the oil-bearers? For those who don't know, most plastics come from oil.

 

No plastic. But I don't see why they can't use cheaper materials to make the penny. Or like others have said just stop making pennies and round everything up to 5 cents.

 

they should just get rid of the penny and bring back the 2 cent pieces

 

At the rate the mint produces cents it would take 1,200 machines and 2,400 people at each mint. Currently the mint makes close to your half million figure for cents with one press and one operator in an 8 hour shift.

 

What if someone's total comes out to $12.03? This doesn't make sense to me.

 

Keep the penny

 

An article about the Canada penny and inflation. http://www.mises.ca/posts/articles/canada’s-penny-the-last-defender-from-inflation/

I think the same concept would apply to ours here in the U.S. I say keep the penny.

Basically, if the penny were to go away, eventually people might think the same for the nickel, then the dime, quarter and so on. If we ended up with the dollar as the smallest denomination, you can bet hyper-inflation would start to exist.

 

You sound like the same type that would correct people, telling them the "lead" in pencils is actually graphite.
BTW, you spelled "Britain" wrong.

 

Something else I found interesting is that due to inflation there has never been a denomination of money worth as little as the penny today. Today a nickel is worth about what a penny was worth in 1970 and when the half cent was discontinued in 1857 is had a value of about 11 cents today.

 

True, but at the same time an ounce of silver was worth little more than a dollar and an ounce of gold was worth about twenty dollars. So it's useless to compare what coins were worth 50 or 100 years ago as opposed to now.
Guy

 

Depends on how you figure it. In my opinion it had a purchasing power closer to today's quarter.