Who here hates Pennies?

[hamsterTK 93]

Pennies suck. They are worth nothing and they get everywhere and I end up throwing them away or vacuuming them up or just ignoring them

But pennies add up??? yeah right!!! well I am sure they actually do, but what a hassle to keep track of them. Over a year if you can accumulate a cool 20 bucks in pennies(2,000 or about a jarful) that seems like  quite an acheivement, until you consider a minimum wage worker only has to stand around for 4 hours to make the same amount.

So, who else here hates pennies? Personally I think if all purchases were rounded up to the five cent mark, that tax could be used for all sorts of great things

[topcliff 1]

Pennies from Heaven, as I always say. I find their monetary value worthless, but I get good luck holding one and I feel like my Grandma's close when I pick one up off the street. Very personal story, I won't get into it.

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

Well in NZ the smallest coin is now a 10c....

[Voar Tok 4]

Originally posted by: hamsterTK

Personally I think if all purchases were rounded up to the five cent mark, that tax could be used for all sorts of great thingsquote>

Which, at the state level, is as productive as an individual collecting pennies so that they add up.

[SpecialEddie 3]

Abolishing pennies would make them collector's items (ala 2 dollar bills).  They'd be worth more than a cent in the end.

[The boy formerly known as Evil Muzz 27]

They are useless, but when I have loads of "coppers" (as they are called here, I think you can guess why), I just take them all in a bag to one of thos emachines that you pour them into, then you get a receipt and take it to a desk where they give you the value of money in notes and coins that you can actually use! Other times I just use them to pay people if they have a sweet that I want (usually a gummy bear or something ). Yesterday I made 10p by sharing my Bonbons...

[ilikehotdogsalot 308]

yeah, i collect the pennies and put it a jar and when the jar gets filled them up, i throw them all in the coinstar machine so it counts it up and gives me a few extra bucks

[Barbarossa 51]

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  Edited September 7, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[kawan 6]

I hate routing through my pocket only to find small change...

Mind you, in some Middle-Eastern countries they have no pennies at all, just notes. Heaven!

[Meg 368]

I tend to leave them in those little cups that some stores keep by the register.  or leave them if there isn't a little cup.  or toss them into a fountain.  or throw them around for little kids to find. and I still wind up with a cupful of them, which I give to my nephew who has a coin counting machine.

I think it costs more than a penny to make one.   They should be abolished.  I'm in favor of rounding up all purchases, collecting it as tax and using it to improve the local school systems. 

[purpledaddy 6]

Some of the prettier women I've dated were named Penny. And they were full of sense too!

[BlondeTwiggy 43]

Ive always hated pennies, theyre so small and useless.  I dont like loose change in general, it just sits in the bottom of my purse until I dump it all out and count it... and even if it adds up to a lot of money (I had $8 in change once), it doesnt feel like much, because its coins.  idk, psychological thing or something.  Id rather have bills.

[Fred_Ginger 1]

Originally posted by: SpecialEddie Abolishing pennies would make them collector's items (ala 2 dollar bills).  They'd be worth more than a cent in the end.quote>

 

I still get two dollar bills when I take my cans and bottles to the recycle center.  Those and 50 cent pieces!  I make a point of trying to give exact change when I pay for things. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Look after the pennies and the pounds (dollars, kroner, yen, whatever) will look after themselves.

It doesn't make sense to get rid of the smallest real division of currency.  We no longer use farthings or hapennies, but they really were valueless as inflation came on.  However, if all prices and calculations of priceses were to be rounded up to the nearest nickel, wouldn't you be offended?  And no merchant in his right mind would round anything down.

This would also mess up many pithy sayings, and result in more political correctness than I could stand.  E.g.  "In for a penny, in for a pound" -> "In for a nickel, in for a pound"?  Blechh.

[Voar Tok 4]

Originally posted by: BlondeTwiggy Ive always hated pennies, theyre so small and useless.  I dont like loose change in general, it just sits in the bottom of my purse until I dump it all out and count it... and even if it adds up to a lot of money (I had $8 in change once), it doesnt feel like much, because its coins.  idk, psychological thing or something.  Id rather have bills.quote>

Ever gone to a store and bought something like a Red Bull with nothing but spare change you had lying in your purse?   IMHO, it's a pretty nice feeling to know you bought something with money you didn't even realize you had.

Originally posted by: SkiGeek

I think it costs more than a penny to make one.quote>

I kind of doubt that, but I'll explain why in a moment.

They should be abolished.quote>

Out of curiousity, why should we abolish them?  If we follow the idea that we should abolish them because they cost more to make than their value, there's a lot of other things that we should quit doing that are a considerably larger source of loss, like how states make toll roads to generate revenue.  Contrary to the opinion of the "they made it a toll road to pay it off and they'd take off the toll when it's paid for - but they never do" crowd, the average toll road will never pay for itself.

Now, I said that I doubt that pennies cost more than their value to make.  The reason why is that the only real way that's possible is if the cost of copper, undoubtedly the most expensive material in one, is more than a penny, but that's unlikely if they can make feet of electrical wire and sell it to you for a song.  The machinery  used to make it probably isn't cheap, but that's a single-time expense, and it's pretty unlikely that the recurring manufacturing costs like employee's salaries are high enough to upset the balance.  The paper industry proves that as even after the forestry company, the lumber mill, the shipping company, and Staples have all had their profit markup, Staples can still afford to sell it to you for six-tenths of a cent per sheet.

I'm in favor of rounding up all purchases, collecting it as tax and using it to improve the local school systems. quote>

I like the idea, except for a couple of things.  The first one is that I seriously have to wonder if the government would actually use it for that purpose.  Social Security is a great example of why I don't trust them to do this.  The second reason is that is a foot in the door of government price setting, and that's a Pandora's Box that that we'd want to avoid.

[Meg 368]

Originally posted by: Voar Tok 

Out of curiousity, why should we abolish them?  quote>

 

http://www.retirethepenny.org/

I have to admit, on my list of things to worry about, this ranks rather low.  There are much more productive ways to spend our time and energy.  But count me in the group that thinks pennies are more trouble than they are worth.

[Barbarossa 51]

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  Edited September 7, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[JakeMD 107]

lol, long post there VT!!

i like to collect them, i have a quarter of a slim jim container lol.!!

[Abc987 3]

Well, I like pennies, because they are more likely to find on the ground then any other currency in the USA, so you have more of a chance of finding a really old one.

BUT,

I still chose that they should be abolished because they really don't serve a purpose, there just annoying to most people. But personally, I'd hate to see them go =(

[GingerBlokey 30]

Pennies are so bad for the enviroment. So many go out of circulation [ive got jars and jars and jars of them]. You need to keep on minting new ones using copper mined from open mines which are ruining areas of the world.

Should be we get rid of both 1p and 2p coins? Thereby rounding everything up or down to 5p multiples. Yes

Coinstar machines are so awesome. In the lobby of Asda or Sainsburys or in the bit by the toilets in Tesco you can just pour a pot of 1 and 2ps into the thing, it takes a % and then gives you a reciept.

If we get rid of pennies you wont be able to do those stupid "penny stretcing" things. But who really cares?

[belfastuniguy 18]

I throw them away, I never use 'copper' I would like to see 1p, 2p and 5p all withdrawn, utterly useless.

[Explodingsims 3]

Well, I honestly don't like them, they're irritating to carry...

But, without them, the cost of items would have to be calculated, with tax, to end in a Zero or Five...

[Duke87 1,070]

Love 'em or hate 'em, pennies aren't going anywhere because the retail industry would never let them go. They want to be able to continue to charge $3.99 for things, after all... and while you could say "Well, just charge $3.95 instead, those four cents when multiplied by the huge number of items stores sell start to add up to a lot of lost profits. Besides, with sales tax and whatnot, your purchase is almost never going to come out to a multiple of five cents no matter what the prices of what you buy are. In fact, almost all purchases have to be rounded since applying a 5.5 or 6% sales tax (about standard for the US) is more often than not going to result in a price with fractions of a cent anyway.

..back in the 19th century, the US actually had half cent coins. But back then when you could buy some candies in a store for a single cent, it wasn't so small a denomination. You may wish to consider it lucky the US mint stopped making them when they did, though, as had they continued to have been made  significantly into the 20th century, you can bet your ass we'd still have them for the same exact reason we still have pennies. Stores would be charging $3.995 for stuff, and decreasing the increment to which you have to round things off adds up to more profits.

It's all the because of the almighty dollar (or, in this case, the almighty cent).

[The_Dalai_Llama 15]

I've never liked pennies... simply phase them out I say!

[Voar Tok 4]

Originally posted by: Duke87

..back in the 19th century, the US actually had half cent coins. But back then when you could buy some candies in a store for a single cent, it wasn't so small a denomination. You may wish to consider it lucky the US mint stopped making them when they did, though, as had they continued to have been made  significantly into the 20th century, you can bet your ass we'd still have them for the same exact reason we still have pennies. Stores would be charging $3.995 for stuff, and decreasing the increment to which you have to round things off adds up to more profits.

It's all the because of the almighty dollar (or, in this case, the almighty cent).quote>

Actually Duke, they were made for at least some serious length of time, according to a relative of mine.  I'm not saying that it couldn't be a hoax (as my google results are bogged down in more irrelevant responses than I'm going to wade through to find out) but she still has a plastic half-cent from I have no real idea when.  However, the fact that its made out of plastic would have to indicate that it was made within the last 50-75 years.  I seem to remember that she said she's used them, and she was quite bummed that they quit making them.

[jacqulina 162]

i dont really like them but i put them in a money pot and collect them lol

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: Voar Tok

Originally posted by: Duke87

..back in the 19th century, the US actually had half cent coins. But back then when you could buy some candies in a store for a single cent, it wasn't so small a denomination. You may wish to consider it lucky the US mint stopped making them when they did, though, as had they continued to have been made  significantly into the 20th century, you can bet your ass we'd still have them for the same exact reason we still have pennies. Stores would be charging $3.995 for stuff, and decreasing the increment to which you have to round things off adds up to more profits.

It's all the because of the almighty dollar (or, in this case, the almighty cent).quote>

Actually Duke, they were made for at least some serious length of time, according to a relative of mine.  I'm not saying that it couldn't be a hoax (as my google results are bogged down in more irrelevant responses than I'm going to wade through to find out) but she still has a plastic half-cent from I have no real idea when.  However, the fact that its made out of plastic would have to indicate that it was made within the last 50-75 years.  I seem to remember that she said she's used them, and she was quite bummed that they quit making them.quote>

The last half pennies in the US were minted in 1857. The official US numismatics guide confirms that.  Besides, the US mint has never made any coins out of plastic. What she has must be play money or fake.

[Goldfish4209 9]

Pennies are useless. To date I've never had any real good use for them. Most machines don't take them. I guess the only thing you can really do is melt them down and sell them back to the mint.

[DOXXP29 5]

In the past few years, I've seen several stores in the D.C. area (Mom and Pop shops, of course) that will price an item at a strange sounding price, but when the tax is added, the price is rounded to an exact amount. (Like $.95, so with the $.05 tax added, the total is exactly one dollar.) Everybody loves these places. Also, I've been in stores where the guy will just give out $.50 if the total is $1.57 and you give him $2.00. I see this a lot in liquor stores and corner markets. The change always favours the customer, of course, so they must make enough so that even after giving out several cents to just about every customer all day, they're not losing a lot of profit.

There's a bank (Bank of America, I think?) where all odd change is put into one's saving account if the person uses a check card. This optional idea is to make balancing the checkbook less of a hassle. I don't know how well this has gone over with their customers, but I'd use it.

[LivingInThePast 364]

Before they switched to zinc, in the 70s, they tried switching to aluminum. It was only a small batch made only for banks and such, therefore, they're incredibly rare.