So I'm an American living in Santiago, Chile, and the Chilean Peso is worth 1/5 of a penny. Most things are rounded to the nearest 50, but some places still go to the nearest peso. We have coins for the 1 peso, 5, 10, 50, 100, and 500 peso; and bills for the 1000, 2000, 5000, 10000, and 20000 pesos.

Anyway, I think that there needs to be a collect your pennies and turn em in for other cash drive so that new pennies are no longer stamped out. There's gotta be enough pennies to go around if people would stop collecting them for years and years until they can make the news by buying a car or something with them.

(Sorry 4c, I just don't think you're ready yet.)

This problem is not rooted in the price of copper or manufacturing or any other "Price." This crisis is rooted in the value of the dollar. The dollar is worth roughly 2% of its gold standard value. The value of copper scales to the value of gold. If your dollar was worth $980/20 (Price of an oz. in $ divided by 20), your penny would be worth about 50 cents, which is less than the manufacturing cost of a penny. Much less.

According to [www.coinflation.com], the metal content of the nickel is 7.3 cents and I'm sure it costs even more than that to produce.

Pennies are required for sales taxes.

Lose the penny! Like countless people have already posted here, I can attest too, that when you are stationed overseas, you don't use pennies (too expensive to ship) and everything functioned fine, the world didn't collapse, money didn't devalue, and no, we didn't want to axe the nickel next.

If you actually melted down all your pennies and sold the copper that resulted, you would get more than you could by changing in the pennies at a bank. When a coin gets to that point, there's no point in making more of them.

First it was Woolworth, then Sears, now Pennys. There's no doubt about it now, we're in one of them secessions!!!

I don't think I could get used to saying a "nickel for your thoughts".

Here's why: Retails price items at $9.99 because it sounds better than $10, right? Well, $9.95 sounds better than $10, too. So the idea that everything will automatically cost more is unlikely.

Some things will round up, others down. Overall the effect will be negligible to consumers, but the savings overall will be large.

I guess when you're in the military, the little things like a penny don't matter, it's just living for the next day that makes you happy. Our country is so messed up when they sweat this....take the penny out already, it's a drain on the economy.

Just another way to tax the people. Get rid of the penny now, then the nickel, after that the dime; and if no one says anything they can move up to the eliminating the quarter and eventually all coins. Nothing will ever be the same. No more 1.25, 1.50, 1.98, or anyting else in between. We'd have to round everything up to a dollar, unless they feel the dollar is obsolete as well. What then? Will $5.00 become the minimum cost of everything? Only in America.

"The penny costs more to produce than it's worth." And that money is gone forever? It doesn't matter what a form of currency costs to produce, because unless we go to a system where a $5 coin is made of $5 worth of metal, and you can cut it up get change, the cost of the currency has no bearing on what it represents. The penny is a token of exchange. The money spent producing feeds the families of mint workers and copper miners and others. So, that argument is, to me, completely pointless.

Our monetary systm is screwed up. The reason we have both dollar coins and dollar bills is because Sens. Kennedy and Kerry want to keep Crane Paper in business. The Virginia delegation vehemently opposes any action that would take Jefferson off the nickel.
In the meantime, we Americans prefer dollar bills so all the dollar coins that are minted annually go to South America as part of our aid program.
I'm getting a headache just thinking about it...

@dray05:
I beg to differ, but when did this government of our really worry about losing $18.3 million, when they are building a ¼ BILLION dollar bridge that would connect Ketchikan, Alaska, to an offshore island where only 50 people live.

A penny saved, would no longer be a penny earned
You won't have good luck if you see a penny and pick it up

You won't be in for a penny if your in for a pound.

This debate has raged at different points in history, most recently in the UK when there was a fight over whether to ditch the pound (a currency the country had since the 8th century) to go to the Euro. The EU is the poorer for having lost its currencies.

In America this debate occurred I believe around 1780--1800, although then it was a bit of an advance. There were three currencies--the British dollar which was often a restamped Spanish real--which was about one ounce of silver. The Spanish real, and then various state coins. Paper money came and went but was not worth what it was printed on.

Around this time two bits became a quarter dollar, well before a shave and a haircut. Silver coins were chopped up into eight parts (pieces of eight) to pay for smaller items.

You will still see Spanish Reals which have chop marks in them. These coins circulated in Asia where traders would chop out a little piece of the coin to see if it was real silver.

But I digress--dumping the penny is a dumb idea subject to fads and the variable price of metal.

Besides, if they got rid of the penny, I would no longer be able to put my 2¢ in.

Why is the nickel larger than the dime? I do not know how that math works either.

New Zealand doesn't even have the 5c piece anymore. I like their coins: 10c 20c 50c $1 $2.. very simple and easy to count.

The Dollar is worth less than the €Euro, lets get rid of that too while cleaning house.

Where is your patriotism, people?

I'll have you know I sold a 1783 cartwheel penny which was so rubbed off nobody could read it for $51 on ebay last month.

I had a mangled Lincoln head up there and refused a $12 offer for it because it was so rare.

Coins are the cheapest way to own history. So if you don't like pennies send them to me!

Why? Put simply, the value of these coins is less than the amount of time that it takes me to handle them.

Let's get serious about $1 coins, too, while we are at it.

However, I am in favor of ridding ourselves of the penny for other reasons. I just think we should acknowledge the valid reasons rather than resorting to a juvenile misunderstanding of how currency functions.

I don't think this will happen where I from, because around here you can exchange five pennies for a nickel.

This is really a no-brainer and shouldn't be a controversy at all. People just like to hang on to the familiar regardless of if it makes sense. They'll get over it if we just do it.

And, the entire cost is offset by the rediculously cheap materials used to make paper money. It costs less than a dollar to make a one dollar note, and it costs the same amount to make a hundred dollar note.

The penny is not worth whining about!

I'm no economist though; I don't have clue one what deprecating the penny would do to our economy.

I'm sure there's a way we could simply reduce the manufacture of pennies or make adjustments in other coinage. Talk of eliminating pennies altogethers just seems unnecessary.

[en.wikipedia.org])

Those coupons have a value of less than a tenth of a cent, and gas tax is figured out to the tenth of a cent for a reason.

I want my last Mill in change, dammit!

I agree that the penny (cent to get technical) could go, however, this being the U.S., any bureaucracy or creation of the U.S. govt is so hard to get rid of I don't see it going anywhere.

I like the penny, I have no problem with them. If you collect 100 you can even get a dollar. Yes, I realize thats it's costing us money to make them, time in transaction involving them but the day you go to buy something and it comes out to $5.97 and you hand the clerk six bucks and they stare at you, you're going to want your three cents.

And just because no one mentioned it before me: 60Minutes piece on the penny.
[60minutes.yahoo.com]
It is worth a watch if you have read this far.

Besides, they are doing a nice redesign on the back next year for the 200 anniversary of Lincolns birth and the 100 anniversary of the Lincoln cent.

As for Vending Machines. Canada had no trouble at all adding $1 and $2 coins to vending machines. Canada is also a much smaller market than the States. No one is going to die if a few vending machines don't accept the new coins for a couple years.

what's funny is that it literally takes about 3 minutes to reprogram a vending machine to accept $1 coins. a technician simply needs to program the drop circuit to register the proper weight to the proper value. helluva lot cheaper than those bill receptacles.

It doesn't make sense at all to get rid of the $xx.99 concept. People usually buy several items, and they normally pay sales tax on top of it. It's much more practical for stores to charge however they want and apply a mandated rounding scheme. Most people don't care much about the pennies they get back now anyway.

As for Vending Machines. Canada had no trouble at all adding $1 and $2 coins to vending machines. Canada is also a much smaller market than the States. No one is going to die if a few vending machines don't accept the new coins for a couple years.

The penny and the nickel cost more to make than their face value. A dollar now would have been worth about 15 cents in 1920 dollars - so what is a penny or a nickel worth? Nothing. Get rid of them.

money is released into the system in varied denominations, so the government will only lose a tiny bit on pennies & nickels in comparison to the billions they will make printing notes.

how about just stop producing pennies, not disband pennies, we can still use pennies hell, there are billions of them around this country sitting around in sock drawers, maybe if they stopped making them it would give us a reason to use them.

Technically, it costs more to mint a nickel than the nickel is worth, too.

The argument should be whether or not the penny has any value to people who potentially use it. And judging by the people who drop their pennies in the "need a penny" cup at the gas station or the ones who don't bother to pick them up off the street anymore, I'd have to say no.

Stupid inflation.

As for pricing, there have been numerous studies that show customers really only look at the first digits of a price, thus, buying something for $9.99 feels much cheaper in the subconscious than the same item for $10.00. I would think stores would keep the $.99 pricing and if it isn't taxed, then you would pay $1.

Additionally, although the penny only contains 2.5% Copper, the value of the metals that consist of the penny are worth more than 1 cent, and it costs the Mint 1.2 cents to produce. The production of the penny resulted in a $18.3 million loss for the government for the 2006 fiscal year, and I would imagine the climbing cost of metals caused an even greater loss last year. ([www.usmint.gov] PDF file)

Finally, the penny has less buying power than ever. In 1972, the penny had the same buying power as today's nickel did. ([www.westegg.com] inflation calculator)

from the articles I read, yes they do cost more to produce than they are worth, however, they last a very long time in comparision to paper money. I'm all for keeping them@stardeo:

And that's why we can't get rid of the penny & why the Republicans want to get rid of it!

First they want the absurd, unfair to the poor & middle-class flat income tax.
Then they want a national value added tax, which they lie & call a national sales tax.
At each transaction prior to its sale to the consumer, a percentage tax would be added to the item raising its price by the 'so-called value added' by the wholesaler.
That means that the tax is added to the previous tax.

Prices would go through the roof here!

If you don't believe that, look at the price of the identical product in Britain, where there is a value added tax.
Almost everything costs 50% - 100% more there!

two shell stations i visit on a regular basis for coffee (and other things) will often just round up. if they owe me 74 cents, they'll give me 75.

so now when someone owes me 12 cents and gives me 10, i don't piss over the 2 cents.

extra pennys come around and go around.

I'd agree with getting rid of the penny.... ONLY if they got rid of the dollar bill & replaced it with a coin. It would save this country a fortune.

I would definitely not miss the modern zinc penny while metal detecting. They are often pitted & pock-marked with literal holes thru them from being eaten by the soil. Ugly & barely spendable. I dream of a day when I find dollar coins with nearly the same frequency I find quarters.

if you study him, his presidency & his politics, you discover that he is nothing more than a reactionary - a victim of circumstances rather than the hero he is made out to be.

i understand that many hold him to be one of our greatest presidents, but i challenge those people to read beyond what we were force-fed in grade school. he was one of the greatest orators to become president, but beyond that, i think the oval office has done better (before & since).

funny side note though - his biggest opponents during the war were deemed "copperheads" (after the snake, b/c they "bit at the heel of the union"), but look who's the copperhead now! lol!

The failure of the metric conversion had nothing to do with people not understanding math. It had to do with a poorly implemented conversion that made people think that metric is more complex when in fact it is simpler. You don't need to know math to read a metric speed limit sign...you just get used to thinking in metric.

This is the same barrier that caused us to fail metric conversion.

Ok for anyone worried about life without the penny know this:

On Army posts and Airforce bases over seas we never used pennies. It cost too much to fly over the coins from to US to Germany. We just simply didn't use them.

When something was 2 cents it rounded down when it was 3 cents you rounded up.

It worked perfectly and still works to this day. I grew up in that envionment my entire young life and when we moved to the states the penny seemed pointless.

It works for thousands of men, women, teenagers and children on tons of military bases. Why could it not work here? The registers rounded and was easy. Worked at the burger kings the PX(like a small Walmart) post office you name it.

An American pennyless society works. There is your proof and evidence.

What will ever happen to the state of Illinois? Or the penny-loafers? Or those hoodlums standing around in back allies pitching pennies? Wait - did I just date myself?

So why is it a problem getting rid of the penny and even the nickle? They didn't have 1/10th cent coins back then.

@rlee: We haven't had a dollar bill in Canada for 20 years and, trust me, the strippers are doing just fine. If an American came up here and tried to give one of them a measly dollar, she'd either laugh or shove it down his throat. Actually, probably both.

Students punished after paying for lunches with pennies.

I think everyone would freak out for the first few days after the penny stopped being made, but then they would get used to it after the media stops talking about it. They'll never get rid of the penny though, that would make too much sense and our government never does anything that makes sense. (another thing that will never happen is us moving to the metric system in this country)

@elislider: Sure does sum it up nicely. The ignorant want the penny disposed of and sadly most of our society is ignorant.

Drop the dollar bill? If the Mint ever grows a brain and designs a dollar coin you can easily distinguish from a quarter by feel, then maybe. But then what about the strippers?

The other thing is that we mostly pay for fuel for our cars with 10ths of a cent, and no one seems to have problems with that math. This would be similar.

The only problem I see with getting rid of it is that the way consumer rights work here in the states is that I see businesses rounding up all their prices to grab as much as 4.5 cents from every customer at every cash transaction. And there's not much in the way of choice here, for example let's say you're buying gas and getting ripped off buy the major chains, what are you going to do, not go to BP and Holiday? There's pretty much no where else to go then.

And yet, you say that as though that were a bad thing...

It's true a penny costs more than $0.01 (point oh-one cents according to Verizon?) to make but until they actually remove it from circulation I'll keep picking them up.

Unfortunately I don't think I can fit any other Consumerist classics in this comment.

Pennies are awesome precisely because so many people don't like them, and hence don't bother picking them up off the ground. Free money for me!

I pick up pennies at all times and keep them in a jar, that extra 30-50 dollars comes to be worth it at the end of the year.

Besides, if those were worried about inflation, they would have mounted the barricades at the merest wisp of a notion of starting a two- (or three-) front war in the Middle East. Wanna halt inflation? End the Iraq (Afghanistan, Iran...) wars.

"Small Government" types and "fiscal discipline" types all of a sudden act contrary to their proclaimed values on this. Spending over $250 million per year for a useless coin is irrational. Money where your mouth is, people.

Finally, Lincoln gets too much coverage as it is anyway. Give him a postage stamp in recompense. Aw, hell, I'm generous: TWO stamps.

They should just remove the Penny, and make all items no longer 9.99 but just $10.00 period, and if 8% sales tax makes the total amount 10.64 cents then just round it off to $10.60, stop dicking around and wasting precious metals to make pennies that get lost every damn year.

What's next? Bringing Democracy or removing the illusion that we're free to choose our leaders?

The whole idea of removing the gold standard is to control the value of money, so unless we take the Federal Reserve out of the picture, money won't be backed up by anything.

And I highly doubt we are going to change our system of money back to one backed by hard assets.

-Hard currency, not a gold standard but money that is backed by hard assets (this will also solve many other inflation problems)

-Make the pennies out of copper plated steel or aluminum. Steel prices are less than $10 per 100 pounds and steel pennies were also made during world war II due to copper shortages with no issues, aluminum has much less chance of oxidation and is still about 80 cents cheaper per pound than zinc.

People squawked and complained for about two weeks, then we loved it... no damn pennies rattling around, if you had change in your pocket you knew it was worth something....

Get rid of the pennies already!

@ClayS:

I do also, but its the thing of the general public feels more comfortable with prices that end in a 9. Its something we are brought up to recognize. Why else to so many things end in 99? When I did my markup, I would have rather left it at say like $400, but I had to either round up or drop it a penny, so it became 399.99 .

Its just a psychological thing.

I remember when 60 minutes put spare change on the street to see if anyone would bother to pick it up...if it wasn't silver, people weren't bending over for it. And that was several years ago.

Also telling...if you try to pay for something in pennies, you'll probably get refused. Or go to your bank and try to deposit pennies. I've been told there's a charge, I've been denied, and I've been forced to roll them myself (many different banks over the years). If a bank won't take them without charging you, what value is it really?

this is how it would work:
you buy something for $1.02
You would normally receive $.98 in change.
The new floating tax would take the 3 cents and you would get $.95.
These pennies, when added up, could go to road maintenance, education, health care, etc.
Electronic transfers (Bank transfers, ATM transactions, etc) could still deal in pennies w/o worrying about the tax.

@socalrob:
No, I think pricing at $7.00 makes more sense than $6.99.

it will probably be deflationary since retailers would rather forego the 4¢ than lose the extra decimal price psychology.

@ptkdude
There are alot of vending machines around me that take the dollar coin. I personally think though that the dollar coin sucks. Working in a retail setting, I would get the dollar coin and just throw it underneath the register money tray. My manager would come in and check the till and put them back in the change area. I asked him to take them in the back and swap them out. No one wanted them, they looked like quarters, but they seemed to fix it, just a bit. I wish they were a little more than slightly different than a quarter.

The metro train system here in Los Angeles gives out up to 19.95 in change if you put in large bills. It costs 1.25 to ride 1 way. If you put in a 20 it gives you 3 quarters and 18 dollar coins. Those were fun to spend when all I had was a 20.

More on topic, taking away the penny would force prices to be at .90 instead of .99 endings. I was told, when I worked in retail furniture, that people like prices that end in 9. So either xx.99 or xx.90. All walmart jokes aside, dont you personally feel odd when you walk into walmart and the prices are like 6.76 for something instead of like 6.99? Or like 5.87? It just seems odd. At least to me....

USELESS PRESIDENT? Are you insane? Child of ignorance? Who kept this country together during the Civil War? Lincoln. Who wrote the Emancipation Proclamation and freed thousands and thousands of slaves? Lincoln. If it wasn't for him, you'd need a passport to cross the Mason-Dixon line.

Please tell me you were joking when you wrote your absurd comment.

For some reason I guess I just like to know my money is worth something even if it is just in melt value. The consensus says "Devalue Away!!!"

If you make a cash purchase, the final cost gets rounded off to the nearest nickel, either up or down. Isn't that the way it's done now with fractions of a cent?

If you make a non-cash purchase (check, credit card, etc) then the final cost should continue to be rounded off to the nearest cent.

For those who complain the vending machine industry will have to pay to rework the machines to accept one- and two-dollar coins, might I point out they didn't have a problem adding bill acceptors to take dollar bills. They can do it (and they make a shitload of money off vending machines, too).

I was in Australia when they eliminated the penny, it really was almost a non-issue. They simpy rounded up or down, which eliminated any inflationary pressures.

@bohemian:
"This and going after Roger Clemons are surely the biggest issues this country has right now."

You are so right. Federal government, wake up!

If we eliminate the penny, would it be legal to still price things in factors other than 5. Could you price something for $29.99? Because then it would technically be impossible to pay with cash. You'd have to use a credit card or check. Hmmmmmmmmm.........

Kill the bastards and give Lincoln the $1 coin. Or the $2 coin.

PS- I was in vietnam where a million dong are worth about $70. I am pretty sure that they have a currency piece (a paper bill) that is below 5000 dong. I dunno that their bottom piece is worth less than a penny (a 100 dong bill would be), but I do not believe this man's testimony on the penny as being the least valuable currency piece in the world.

I wouldn't mind seeing it gone, if only because it's, well... worthless.

@laserjobs: I don't see moving it up causing a problem, because the bottom unit doesn't change (it's still $0.01), there's just nothing of value that low.

Rounding prices down should be the standard (or even better, actual even prices -- gasp!) anyway.

I kinda like pennies but then I am a penny pinching cheapass.

People in the US argue that vendors would round up and items would cost more. Just like any good consummerist: stop shopping there. There are other argument about it, but the best argument for removal of the penny is that they cost more to produce than they are worth!

Another thing to remember when you feel the urge to say "but if the vendor or even the consumer loses the penny, then they are making less money and on million of transactions that adds up!" you have to remember that when you calculate sales tax those fractions of a penny are lost...and it adds up. Or when you compound interest over time those fractions of a penny are lost...and it adds up.

Isn't that the whole basis of that thing they did in Superman II or was it Office Space? Take a penny; leave a penny?

I say: leave the penny.

Take away the penny and watch how inflation will jump since the currency will devlue even more. If you keep moving up the lowest denomination, soon you will have even larger inflation problems than we have now. I would hate to see inflation get worse especially with food and gas.