Executive Order to stop minting cents

Computers get smaller and more powerful. The machines that make everything including computers get ever more huge and require ever less workers and effort. There is ever more to waste as we fill up the landfills with defective products and pennies.

 

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It might be a little self serving but I've always liked well made coins. Back when I started collecting buffalo nickels from pocket change I didn't mind if a well made coin was circulated as long as it had nice even wear and no blemishes.

But when the memorials and clads came around I expected BU as well.

 

There are a lot of fun coins in the zinc series, many wonderful errors, plating disturbances, ddd, and really fun varieties. The cent has produced the largest collector interest in numismatics for generations.
If Gold was revalued. I could see a reinvention of the cent. If you want to find a history of devaluation, read up on the ancients section, (ps one of my favorite places) to read.
Current economics fall right in line. It's time for a correction of the dollar.

 

Might i just say, we can rely on the government to do it for us, or we can meet our neighbor, be a neighbor @Troodon read of the broken window... My response would be yeah I have a window. I will send one of my workers out tomorrow for free, you know what I will be there. you have food, cause me and my crew love a free lunch..

 

The Lincoln cent works great for a fuse box when you need a quick fix just be careful could burn your house down

LOL

 

Thank you First Sergent!

 

NO it does not. For the record it is not his decision to make.

 

It kind of is. If the Treasury Secretary is told to stop minting them, they won't be minted until he is replaced or changes course.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt made it illegal to own gold in the United States in 1933 with Executive Order 6102. The order was in effect until 1974 when it was repealed

 

From what I heard it is, it saddens my heart, hopefully we can reinvent the Cent. But it may be long gone.

 

Yes it is. The number of a given coin (unless a piece of legislation specifically states otherwise) minted is up to the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury, who answers to the president. He has the authority to say that number is 0. A future secretary answering to a future president can always change that, but he does have the authority to stop a coin from being minted for as long as he holds that position.

Now if they want to declare that the penny will never be minted again, that would take an act of Congress (which can always be reversed with another act of Congress). But they can indeed stop a coin from being minted as long as they're in charge. It's not likely a future one would change their mind about it, but that's always possible.

 

I like the half cents, 2 cent pieces, and 3 cent pieces in my collection. But I would never suggest there's any reason to start minting those again. The cent had its time, and there's plenty to collect even if they never mint another one, but at some point you have to accept when something's obsolete and it makes no practical sense to keep making it. And that point for the cent was years ago.

 

Amen. I agree 100% with this. Cents don't circulate. It is time to move on.

The nickel needs a cheaper alloy mix, too. But the composition is dictated by law, right? Congress will need to act. The mint has been looking at options: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_(United_States_coin)#Increase_in_metal_values

 

I would think most banks don't use coinage it's usually deposits or withdrawals seems the problem to me is we need to put a premium on all of our business strike change except for the businesses of course but everybody else dig into your pockets and pay the premium

 

You round after the sales tax is applied and the most it will cost you is 2 cents aand about half the time it will round down and you gain the 2 cents. In the long run it averages out to a net change of 0.

By my calculations it works ot to about 68 tons of copper per billion cents. Until the past two years it has average around 8 billion sent per year so call it 414 tons of copper. No, the copper mining industry isn't quaking in their boots.

Latest Annual Mint Report puts the cost at 13.7 cents each

And in previous years the mintages have been MUCH higher. Yes they are going someplace, but it is not back into circulation.

During Covid many businesses, especially groceries, were still operating and using coins for making change. Most people take their change home and just toss it into a jar until it adds up and the they deposit it back at the bank where it returns to circulation. But during Covid the banks were either closed completely or at least their lobbies were closed. And you can't exchange rolls of coins through their pneumatic tube systems. So you had pretty much a strictly one way flow of coins from businesses to the customers. This meant the businesses ran out of coins. They couldn't get them from the banks, but they could get them from the armored car services...for awhile. The armored car services were also dependent on coins flowing back to them from the banks. For awhile they could get coins from the Federal Reserve stockpiles but those were running out as well. The Fed could get new coins from the Mint, but they were on a reduced work schedule due to Covid. Also when it comes to coins in circulation 90% of them are coins being recirculated, and only 10% comes from newly minted coins. So when the banks losed and cut off most of the recirculated coins we got a coin shortage.

King George VIII didn't ban them, but he did put a tax on them. With the result that many people bricked up their windows to avoid the tax.

 

Pretty sure you meant Henry VIII? There's only been 6 King Georges in Britain so far.

 

Yep, Henry VIII, was even thinking Henry when I wrote the post. Don't know why the fingers wrote George. (And it has been too long so I can't correct it.)