What I really like are the $2 bills. Not that I like that exchange amount, but I love the look on cashiers’ faces when I try to use them. You have to special order them from your bank, but you can still get them.
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It’s all fun and games until they call the cops on you for trying to pass counterfeit money
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I think as long as there are plenty of pennies in the “give a penny, take a penny” tray at the 7-11 then we don’t need to mint any more.
When they become scarce they will go up in value-- buy them on ebay for 5 cents each!
I’m a white male in my 40s, so I probably will just get a laugh and a pat on the back when the po-po show up.
BLM. Ain’t kidding.
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The argument about it costing more than a penny to make a penny is just a red herring. A penny is used many times over decades, so its utility exceeds its costs of production. The problem with them is that that utility is still basically nothing. If you look at coins from a utility standpoint, we should get rid of pennies, nickels and dimes (maybe quarters too). What I’d really like to see is a nice small half dollar and dollar coin and paper bills for $5 and up. None of this “we still handle cents digitally” though. If you can’t give me a penny you don’t get to charge me one.
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I loved those! I haven’t seen them in the wild in a couple decades now, but I’ve used them when they were.
It’s sad that a country that got people on the moon fifty years ago can’t even get people off the continent anymore. Yay Covid Island!
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So, simple solutions, turn the current penny into the nickel. 
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Penny hoarders will finally see their hobby pay off!
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Maybe we can melt all the copper and put it on doorknobs.
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"The argument about it costing more than a penny to make a penny is just a red herring. A penny is used many times over decades, so its utility exceeds its costs of production. "
That’s a very good point. Pennies routinely circulate for 30+ years (I still find pennies from the 60s and 70s in my change), so it isn’t like they are disposable. Of course, that then begs the question of why we need to continue to make so many of them every year in the first place. I cannot help but wonder if the price argument is more in keeping with the Mint making interesting coins that they know that they are essentially “selling”. State quarters, presidential dollars, so many of those drop out of circulation so quickly because people are collecting them…
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So, my father in law passed away in April. As we were cleaning out his home, we came upon jar after jar of loose coins, sorted by type. Let me tell ya, $150 in pennies takes up less space than one would think and is so heavy that one would think it about to tear a whole in the time space continuum. We rolled up close to $1k in change and needed a rolling suitcase to transport it all to the bank.
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Do you think it funny that the solution to “the house is on fire” is “call the fire department” and not “install smoke detectors”?
Monetary policy leaders agree with you that we should pursue policies that slow inflation. I doubt they’d find your suggestion that inflation can be reversed helpful.
Man, how did you let the Fae get access to your grandfather-in-law’s stash? Do you know just how hard it is to clear an infestation? Better off to not let them gain a toehold in the first place.
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So, no more collecting jars of pennies?
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Way back in the day (early 1960s) one of my uncles developed the habit of emptying his pocket change into a five gallon glass carboy that he kept by his bedside.
His mother (my grandmother) was handy with a knitting needle and she made for him a cover for that jar that made it look like a lady wearing the Victorian fashion hoop skirt.
Sometimes he could not be arsed to put the cover back on the jar after he’d emptied his pocket change, but then after his mother would visit his apartment and guilt him about it, he would (for a while at least) faithfully cover the five gallon jar each evening after he’d emptied his pockets.
At some point, his apartment was burgled while he was at work. He came home to find his place pretty well tossed and his electronics (television, stereo, etc.) long gone. That jar of mixed coins however was untouched, the cover still on it, completely missed by the thieves.
As the story goes, when he counted up the change in the jar, even though it was only about half full, it amounted to couple hundred dollars, a very tidy sum for the day. It took a lot of the sting out of the theft because due to way he had accumulated it, the coins had the feeling of “found money.”
This took place at or near the time of my birth, so I have no direct recollection, this is just a story passed down to me as history.
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I blame Big Penny.
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What if we made nickles out so zinc?
I do like pennies. I feel like they should keep making them for collectors as part of mint sets - and we could make them pure copper again. Maybe make commemorative ones. But stop making them for circulation.
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Gonna miss you, Penny.
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I also have an Uncle/coin story. My uncle apparently kept all his pocket change from 1976 until March of this year. All together it weighed about 97 pounds. We ran it through the coin machine at the bank and it came to $621.
A challenge with dollar coins seems to be that people hoard them. Think how many Susan B. Anthony dollars, Sacajawea dollars, and whatever else were minted, but how rare it is to find them in circulation. Likewise for the 1976 bicentennial quarters and half dollars, as well as the poor old $2 bill. Whenever someone finds one, they pull it out of circulation.
Was it the same for the steel pennies of 1943, I wonder?
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Big Zinc a.k.a. Americans for Common Cents is the main lobbyist group for retaining the penny. Interesting case study in how effective even modestly funded lobbying is in exercising disproportionate influence within the U.S. system.
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