What About Making Pennies From Aluminum?

Aluminum is expensive when put into a form people want. The price will rise if demand increases for coin production.

 

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Highly unlikely because plastic wouldn't work in current vending machines -- or parking meters.
Retooling would be WAY too expensive.

 

Parking meters will only take cards now/soon.
If the dimes/quarters/dollars are still made from the same material than you don't have to retool.

 

Not by much, though. I get a total weight for ALL US coins struck in 2020 somewhat less than 40,000 tons. Global aluminum production was 65 MILLION tons in the same year.

 

Most self-checkout machines, which are becoming more common, take cents. In addition, banks and their change support services have machinery designed to handle cents. Any change in dimensions or density of cents will require this machinery to be altered or changed … at many millions of dollars cost.

Inflation will insure the cent disappears before long regardless of composition, so why invest millions in a stopgap measure?

Cal

 

Consideration of availability and manufactured manipulation of pricing points is important in discussing and future demise of aluminum. After all, the suspension of trading because of shenaniganigans Involving Shorting a certain Chinese firm, and the ripple effects that bordered on Billions of Dollars in loss (mostly by disgruntled Traders that jumped on the scheme wagon) had serious repercussions on the world market and governments, and had a direct effect on the PM market.

This will pass, and aluminum availability at reasonable market prices will emerge, making any alternative suggestions moot.

"LLOYDS WILLS IT!!" (stated in the best Knights Templar voice from Kingdom of Heaven).

 

Yep, it's a REAL problem for me.
If the meters don't take coins, I've got parking problems.
I play hell trying to park in one of the local metropolitan areas.

 

If you get rid of cents, the self checkout machines, banks, change services etc.
don't have to retool anything. And the previously minted cents will stay in circulation. I don't understand what you are saying unless it is anti- aluminum cents, which isn't really any kind of option.

 

The Mint HAS studied the option of replacing the copper plated cent with an aluminum coin. From the 2012 biennial report on the study of alternative materials. (There is really a lot of good information in the 2012 report. The later years reports are not nearly as good since they are basically just going through the motions (and charging the tax payers) and repeating the results of the 2012 report.)

"aluminum alloys jam or destroy some types of coin-acceptance or coin-handling equipment, which would require costly upgrades to enable this equipment to process aluminum-based coins;"

"Coins made of low-density metals such as magnesium and aluminum alloys may be perceived by the public to be too light to properly represent the face value of these coins."

"A United States Mint study recommended an aluminum alloy for the one-cent coin in the 1970s, but vigorous opposition was heard from the vending and coin-processing industries. As a result, Coinco®, SCAN COIN, MEI® and other leading coin-processing equipment manufacturers were contacted in this study to learn of issues associated with the use of aluminum (and other materials) in coins. Representatives from these organizations unanimously recommended avoiding the use of aluminum as a material of construction in circulating coins. The low mass of aluminum coins causes jamming in coin-acceptance mechanisms, which often triggers costly service calls."

"An, opinion expressed in a call for public comment that was posted by the United States Mint in the Federal Register [15] showed some public resistance to the use of lightweight coinage alloys (such as aluminum and magnesium). Several respondents expressed the opinion that using such lightweight coins would cheapen the feel of US circulating coins; others commented that such lightweight coins would signal devaluation in the US dollar."

From a table of cost estimates 5052-H32 Aluminum in strip form was still projected to cost 1.8 cents per coin to produce.

"The low density of aluminum as an alternative material candidate did cause coin-acceptance equipment jamming problems, and was therefore strongly discouraged by all the manufacturers; all three coinprocessing equipment manufacturers have experienced problems with aluminum coins used in their equipment within other countries."

"For one-cent coins, which are rarely used in vending machine commerce, but are routinely processed through coin sorters and counters, security is not a significant issue due to their low value. These coins must feed reliably through coin-handling equipment and should not jam or be misvalidated as another coin if mistakenly inserted into any coin-processing device. The low weight of aluminum one-cent nonsense pieces did cause coin-processing machine jamming problems, and was strongly discouraged by all manufacturers of coin-processing equipment."

"Aluminum alloys have been used for low-denomination coins in some countries including Japan, Korea, China and in some earlier European countries. There have been some reports of poor wear resistance, galling and jamming in coin-processing equipment; cold welding of aluminum coins during processing have been known to cause permanent damage to high-speed coin sorters/counters. The coin-processing equipment manufacturers and their clients are strenuously opposed to aluminum coinage for these reasons."

There are many other negative comments about using aluminum. Basically aluminum isn't a really good idea for a high volume coinage country.