Disappearing Penny's

There is much consideration going on at the Mint and alot of whispers at the GAO with regards to taking the penny out of circulation. What do you think about that ?

 

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Sounds like another story to me. Those rumors keep getting started and repeated. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, then I don't worry about that either.

 

Ah, the eternal debate. As reference for newer members here are some previous postings on this subject.

Should We Eliminate the Cent? http://www.cointalk.com/t62352/
Will The Cent Last Another 10 Years? http://www.cointalk.com/t58997/
The debate in Congress continues http://www.cointalk.com/t36897/

If the US Mint, for whatever reason, stops production of the cent, I'll stop adding new issues to my cent collection.

 

I think you would be justified in that act, penny. LOL

 

2009 should be the fitting end for the Penny.

Theirs like what, 1.65 TRILLION of those little things out there. Let it die with dignity.

 

WHAT? This has been discussed before? I didn't know that. WOW.

 

ROFL:smile

 

They were talking about nuking cents back in the mid 1970s when copper first started appreciating in price. The cent has no purchasing power by itself unless in some novelty gumball machine or a super market that has the penny horsey ride for kiddies.

Cents exist for the purpose of sales tax, and until or if people are willing to pay more tax or upped prices due to rounding up, cents will continue to be around.

One thing we do not have like back in the 1970's are cent shortages. Back then banks were even paying 55 cents a roll for cents so they had them to give out.

As noted above, there are trillions of them out there, nearly as many as the dollars going down the drain for all the government pork projects.

 

Concerns about the cost of producing cents due to raw material cost were first raised in 1793 and played a major part of the change decisions in 1857, and of course in 1981 when zinc core cents were planned for 1982. I'm sure there were other milestones in cent production that were affected, these three came to mind.

 

Wow. I actually thought there were some new facts on the topic.

 

What about this? It looks like the question of a steel penny and nickel may still alive.

http://www.coinnews.net/coin-legisl...dernization-and-taxpayer-savings-act-of-2008/


One opinion among many...

In 1964 (the year we ended the silver standard), we didn't have coins with the purchasing power of today's penny and nickel. A penny back then had the purchasing power of about 12 cents today.

Get rid of the penny and nickel, raise the maximum paper currency (for general use) from $100 to $1000, and make coins up to a $20 coin...with no coin larger than today's half dollar.

 

Theirs like what, 1.65 TRILLION of those little things out there. Let it die with dignity.

Think of it as one penny for every dollar of the deficit for 2009. I think we should keep the pennies and quit printing the dollars out of thin air.

 

There are not nearly enough cents for there to be one cent for every dollar in the deficit. The deficit in dollars by far pales the amount of cents ever struck.

 

Not that it would ever happen but it would be interesting to see how the public would vote on the topic. At the same time I'm thinking that only about half of the public vote on anything. Maybe a giant survey on the streets all over the US would be cool.
I don't have a clue what the public thinks about this.

 

To my knowledge...no it has never been discussed here before. :whistle:

 

I agree!

 

Statistics like this always intrique me. Where did those numbers come from and just who went out and counted them all?.:smile Now imagine that person counting all those pennies (cents) and a sneeze comes up, his wife calls him to dinner, he drops one and it rolls under a table, etc. Wouldn't he then loose count? What if at 1.63 Trillion and had to start all over?:whistle:
Now imagine counting all those at the rate of 1/second. With 31,536,000 seconds in a year, how long would it take to count all those? Worse yet, after all done, someone makes one more?
I truely suspect there are actually only 1.6499998742 Trillion out there.
Everyone constantly mentions changing the metalic content of our coinage to some form of cheaper metals. Why not chocolate? If you don't want to spend them, just eat them.

 

There are not nearly enough cents for there to be one cent for every dollar in the deficit. The deficit in dollars by far pales the amount of cents ever struck.

Budget deficit for the year 2009 is around that amount.

 

As much as I would like to see the cent disappear from circulation, as long as we have real money there will always be a cent because too many people might think they were being cheated if rounded to a nickel.

If we ever goto all electronic and dump physical money I could see the cent disappear.

 

The Penny (cent) is as American as apple pie. It would be an abomination to discontinue this issue.....MHO :smile