Get rid of the penny?
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They still do - its called the "spread" and its usually less than a penny. However given average daily volume is around 40MM now - it adds up.
I also just read that 2024 was the first year that there were more stock trades done by "dark pools" than by the exchanges. Dark pools are basically where banks, hedge funds, etc trade amongst themselves rather than involve the market makers or the exchanges. I presume this was how for example Elon Musk was able to purchase like 11% of Twitter without anyone knowing about it, for example.
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4WD
$50 site donor 2025
Yeah, that was my point
My problem is that nobody wants to round up that 0.0007 of a bitcoin I own to 1.
I was going to say gas stations have charged 0.9 cents for a hundred years. (Originally represented the tax)
My county charges 5.5 cents of tax on a dollar
So prices can still be silly and you just get ripped off when you pay
It cost $179 million last year to make $41 million worth of pennies apparently.
3.7 cents of raw material to make 1 penny. 11.1 cents to make a nickel.
I have some 1943 steel pennies.
They should phase out everything except the quarter as far as coins go. Even then, mostly because of vending machines.
Breaking news. Orders were given to stop the press.
We should have China mint pennies for us so we can buy them at face value.
Joking!
Won't it look too much like a nickel at that point?
Yeah but why not. The penny only looks good when it's brand new and untarnished. Within a month of use it's nasty looking.
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This will cause a meltdown of American brains. I picture people walking around in utter confusion.
Owen Lucas
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I've read that one of the reasons for trading in dark pools is to avoid swinging the market when large trades are made i.e. Bezos selling some stock for personal reasons.
I could be fine with that, although I can't remember the last time I used a vending machine.
I recall a guy in shop class that was punching out blanks that had the general size and shape and thickness of quarters and putting them in vending machines.
The police were not amused when they caught up with him. The school noticed that they had a lot less scrap metal than usual and then he was dumb enough to go put some of them into the vending machines at the school.
There's probably still enough metal in a quarter to be worth making a quarter, and we could be looking at metal prices and seeing if we can just change the composition. Has anyone looked at that in decades? Probably not. If we can get the cost down 20% or whatever by changing that, we should do that.
During the commodity price crisis in the 2010s, China was one of the countries that was melting down our coins for scrap metal value.
The Secret Service investigates this. Technically if you leave the country with more than $25 worth of nickels you've committed a federal crime.
Check your cup holders before you drive into Canada or Mexico.
Anyway, I think that the government should just put an order to stop production of everything but the quarter and a return to mint order on everything else. We should go back and start selling our own coins for melt value. We'd probably make.... a pretty penny?
MolaKule
Staff member
Get rid of them.
Maybe merchants will now drop the silly $XX.X9 type of pricing.
Metal composition of coins:
https://www.usmint.gov/learn/coins-and-medals/circulating-coins/coin-specifications
I recall a guy in shop class that was punching out blanks that had the general size and shape and thickness of quarters and putting them in vending machines.
The police were not amused when they caught up with him. The school noticed that they had a lot less scrap metal than usual and then he was dumb enough to go put some of them into the vending machines at the school.
There's probably still enough metal in a quarter to be worth making a quarter, and we could be looking at metal prices and seeing if we can just change the composition. Has anyone looked at that in decades? Probably not. If we can get the cost down 20% or whatever by changing that, we should do that.
During the commodity price crisis in the 2010s, China was one of the countries that was melting down our coins for scrap metal value.
The Secret Service investigates this. Technically if you leave the country with more than $25 worth of nickels you've committed a federal crime.
Check your cup holders before you drive into Canada or Mexico.
Anyway, I think that the government should just put an order to stop production of everything but the quarter and a return to mint order on everything else. We should go back and start selling our own coins for melt value. We'd probably make.... a pretty penny?
It's actually $5, kinda sorta. And they're combined. As far as I can tell, it would be legal for a coin dealer to do so (up to $25) if the purpose if for legitimate sale to collectors outside the United States.
(2) The exportation of 5-cent coins and one-cent coins carried on an individual, or in the personal effects of an individual, departing from a place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, when the aggregate face value is not more than $5, or when the aggregate face value is not more than $25 and it is clear that the purpose for exporting such coins is for legitimate personal numismatic, amusement, or recreational use.
I do remember years ago when my high school chemistry teacher demonstrated the metal content of (then) new pennies with a copper cladding over zinc. He scratched the copper until zinc was visible, and dropped it in hydrochloric acid. It started bubbling and after a long enough time he fished it out and showed that it was basically a shell of copper. I've also used squished penny machines. These are legal up to a point.
