If we are making Lincoln cents can we just make them every few years?

If we are still gonna make Lincoln cents can we just make them every other 3 years because we have hundreds of billions of them out there and it makes no sense to make 8 billion of them every year.

 

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Problem is, quite a few from the 8 billion are lost, damaged, buried, played with, experimented on, destroyed, accidentally eaten, and some other weird things. When The Mint thinks what you are thinking here, they reduce the amount they make, and that date therefore becomes a semi-key or key date coin. In 1931, the Great Depression was at its peak, and The US Mint was running out of money, so they decided to not make as many coins for that year. In 2009, The US Mint realized they had enough nickels and so they made less, which made 2009 nickels rare.

 

I don’t know about you, but I have problems getting my hands around the concept of mintages in the multiple billions.

 

2009 nickels are not rare, 40 million Phillies and 47 million Denvers. They just aren't as abundant as other years.

 

For all the billions of pennies minted every year I'd still like to find a 2018 in change this year. Where do they all go?

 

Try Walmart. They get all the new money.

 

The Mint was not running out of money, the depressed economy was not generating a demand for new coinage. The people were dipping into the coins they already had on hand to try to make ends meet. That returned a lot of coins to circulation and new coins were not needed. The Depression didn't peak for another two years and that was why the 1932 and 33 production was way down as well. The same thing happened in 2009. The crash of 2008 meant a lot of people couldn't make ends meet so they took their coin stashes back to the bank. The Fed was flooded with coins and had no reason to order more from the mint. Nickel and dime production ceased completely, cent and quarter production were greatly curtailed.

Even though the mint makes billions of new cents every year, and there are hundreds of billions of them supposedly in circulation, if the mint were to stop production we would see cent shortages within a couple months, premiums being offered for cents within maybe four months, substitutes and the beginning of rounding before six months, widespread rounding before eight months and the cent would effectively cease to be a circulation coin before the end of the first year. And once it was gone it would not come back even if the mint began production again. Once the rounding was well established and commonplace there would be no reason for businesses to ask for cents at the banks anymore. They would no longer be needed for making change. After months of not asking for them, because the banks never had them, why would they start asking for them again?

We don't make 8 billion new cents each year because the economy has expanded so much it needs 8 billion more. We make then to replace the 8 billion we made last year that are now in jars around the nation and not circulating.

 

Not in my area. At least not yet.

 

When was the last time anyone used a penny for an actual transaction? Why are we making them at all?

 

I slam all the ones I get metal detecting into the coin acceptor at the grocery when I want to buy OJ or almond silk. Great way to get rid of them. Almost 8500 so far.

 

Answers in order: I can’t remember and I haven’t a clue.

 

Yesterday.

 

Yesterday in fact. At least a dozen times. I was at a rock and gem show and most dealers weigh rocks to the cent. A lot of gems are sold by the gram and they want every cent.

 

We need lots of them circulating so that they can come back as valuable error coins.

 

0.1 percent of 8 billion. Happy hunting.

 

Did the dealers charge sales tax?

 

Think they hide a lot of money in supposed coinage numbers claiming that's actually where some of the missing money went.

 

All the dealers from New York did and most, about 85%, of all the other dealers charged sales tax unless you had a tax exempt number for resale.