It’s nonsense that we still have pennies. A dime now buys what a penny did when I was a kid. I’m for abolishing the nickel too. Pennies and nickels both cost more to produce than their supposed worth. If dimes became the cheapest coin, then much could be saved in print and cash registers by eliminating the extra digit. Of course the quarter would have to be replaced by 20 or 50 cent pieces, since 25 is not evenly divisible by 10.

Apparently some fools are worried that stores would only round upward. That implies a complete misunderstanding of how markets work. Store owners don’t conspire with their competitors. In reality, if one store rounds up, its competitor down the block would round down to steal business. In Australia (where the 5 cent piece is now the smallest) individual items are still priced to the nearest cent, but when reaching the checkout the total is rounded appropriately to the nearest five cents. When I was serving in Vietnam during the late sixties, the smallest U.S. currency denomination was 5 cents. That caused us no concern.

Paper dollars are more costly to produce than metal ones, due to lack of durability which leads to a short time in circulation. One never really needs more than four of them. Dollar coins would be much easier to use in vending machines, assuming those who own the machines make them compatible.

The trick is for politicians to stop worrying that voters will throw them out if they change the coinage system. Certainly greater issues should be considered by the electorate. Somehow Congress managed to accept the need for digital TV transmission.

Now if only they would get real concerning the need to enforce the metric system in this country. Actually, it’s been the official U.S. system since the mid 19th century and was given a rather weak promotional push by Congress in the 1970’s. A ten-minute video would teach Americans the extremely simple measurement system used by the rest of the world. In the army we were forced to use it and it became natural quite quickly. Let’s abandon our stuck in the mud attitudes.

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Heard on the radio Saturday that cents and nickels will be made from plated steel in the future. Cheaper that way.

I agree that we need to replace the dollar bill with a dollar coin. The only way to do that is to stop printing the bills, like Canada did.

If you can't abolish the cent and nickel, how about some legislation to make gas prices a whole number of cents? That extra 0.009 cents makes no sense (sorry) with prices as high as they are these days.

Fred

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Did you mean 0.009 dollar?

Indeed, pricing gallons of gasoline in mills is a relic of the past when 19.9¢ might have made sense. Pricing $4 gasoline in mills seems absurd. The problem is that no service station wants to price in cents unless its competitors do the same thing at the same time. Legislation may indeed be necessary.

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I don't know why dollar coins are so hard for the public to accept. We had them in the past.

I know very little about coin history and collecting but I had to learn a little recently. An aunt of mine who lived in Alameda, CA died last month, and we had to fly out there for the funeral. She and her late husband had no children. We on her side are ~3000 miles away, and so she made her husband's nephew (lives in Santa Rosa) the executor of the estate. Which suits me fine.

Going through her things, she had a safe in her garage. Combination was nowhere to be found, and so we had to hire a security outfit to come out. Turns out they were able to get the combination from the manufacturer (for a fee, of course, of course).

Anyway, we opened the safe and lo and behold there was box full of old silver dollars and other old coins. I later learned some where Morgan dollars, Liberty dollars, and some Franklin half dollars.

And so I got to looking. Some of the Morgans dated back to the 1870s. And one or two had an 'S' (for San Francisco) mint stamp. As near I as could figure, some of those might be worth a little depending on the condition, which I knew little about grading. Some were in good shape, but others were worn noticeably.

Anyway, I got an e-mail from the nephew. A coin dealer offered him $2000 for the lot and he took it. While I don't really care, I suspect he could've gotten more than. I suspect that dealer will at least double his money.

ETA: That was Peace dollar, not Liberty. I got confused. I remember the (seated) Liberty dollar because I discovered those were very valuable indeed, and looked to see if they had any. They didn't.

-Richard

The only problems that happened with the dollar and two dollar coin
-vending maching prices went up but probably were going to anyway
-extra weight in your pockets

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Currently Denmark is at .50 and .25 krone (50 and 25 øre) coins, seems to have worked well, probably because together with the coinage reform there was legislation mandating how rounding must be done, plus we have strong consumer protection so people trying to abuse the change got prosecuted.

We changed the 10 and 20 krone bills to coins a while ago.
No one complained, except it ruined the April fools joke of saying fake 20 krone bills where in circulation that could be recognized by the two birds having three legs (only three legs where actually visible, though once you got the idea, it did look like the second bird should have had two legs visible instead of having one hidden).

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Why not simply revaluate the dollar 10:1! That way everything would be priced like it was in the 70s. Of course it would open some eyes as people realize that, except for executives, our pay has been cut at least in half!

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What we need is a fifty cent quarter. That way for instance you could make a phone call and get the same quarter back. Even in Detroit.

Or even better, a $200 benjamin. You could fill your gas tank and get the bennie in change.

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(0.009 dollar/cent) Whatever...

Fred

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I hate when I go to the store to get something quickly and the person in front of me purchases like $7.89 and takes like 2 minutes to search through their purse to give exact change. Or worse looks for exact change and doesnt find it.

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^THIS! >.<

And I prefer paper to coins because of weight as well.

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I like to pay with exact change. But I figure out a rough figure and have the change in hand at the ready by the time I see the price.
I don't like having tons of loose change.

I hate it when the person in front of you at a convenience store pays for their items and THEN asks to buy a lottery ticket. This happens to me all the time, and they take forever to choose which scratch off they want to buy.

It isn't unusual for them to pay for that ticket- and then buy another one!

The Aussies (and other countries, I think) make their bills out of a type of plastic and thus don't have the issues of a short life span or counterfeiting like we in the US do. Probably also easier for bill readers to figure out what they're being fed as well.

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Here in the US, that's called "Play Money."

i like having all those denominations of coinage.. it adds up to quite the little chunk of change in no time..
i've got a jar with probably $300 in pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters that i've accumulated in the last few months.
and i like paper money in different denominations that divide into 100. it makes it easier to carry larger amounts of money- and is especially useful for people like me that like to spend money "off the grid" -that is, in non electronic ways. i have no financial accounts of any kind, and live off the cash i have on hand.

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I can appreciate that more and more, although I wonder how you get internet access cash only. The older I get the more curmudgeonly I get. There were some old codger relatives of mine way back who pretty much rejected modern advances, and I swear if I'm not beginning to appreciate that. Must be in the genes, and they only activate later in life. And old great-uncle of mine wouldn't have anything to do with that new telephone. He was violently opposed to having one. And dang it, he was on to something, I think. I wish I could get rid of all my phones -- nothing but bother.

However, going off grid will soon be impossible, I'm certain. The IRS and "national security" plus law enforcement crap will see to that. It's in all those interests to know and track every penny that goes through our hands. They've got to make sure they're taxing everything possible, plus make sure you're not buying any contraband, etc, etc. And they'll tie in "for the children" somehow as well if need be. And so we'll evolve into some cashless system, all electronic.

Stop world, I want to get off........
-Richard

The periodic story of "pennies cost more..."

I like the Australian way. It mimics the way sales taxes are done, so I don't think there would be a lot of people with too much to say about it.

The simple issue is most people will be scared of the unknown effects of making any change like this. You can publicize it all you want, but how many people are really going to trust what is being said.

When it comes to money, the general feeling I get from people is that people lie.

Now; combine that with government officials scared to upset the American people, and you will never get it done as long as there is a partial solution such as the steel coin.

Just look at the dollar bill (and other denominations). The design of security precautions is being done ever so slowly because of its acceptance. I've heard this mentioned in various stories, but I've never heard what kind of monetary impact this would have. (at least not outside of a politician's own economy)

Just read the following threads and you'll see just how hard it would be to gain acceptance. It seems like everyone has there own preferences and is unwilling to accept that another preference may not be such a big deal.
Eliminate penny or no?
Currency poll-Canada/US...
Coinage Usage Survey for American's - USA/Canada - dollar coins only
New gold (presidential) dollar coins- what's the point?
Pennies: save em or chuck em?


Get real?...they actually went backward.
Reagan killed the US Metric board according to this thread.

In general, I think it's great he killed something that was useless. But; the big issue is the fact that it should never have been useless.

Again; what politician's gonna stick their neck out?

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