Sharply rising prices of metals such as copper and nickel have meant the face value of pennies and nickels are worth less than the material that they are made of, increasing the risk that speculators could melt the coins and sell them for a profit.
The best solution, Velde said, would be to "rebase" the penny by making it worth five cents rather than one cent. Doing so would increase the amount of five-cent coins in circulation and do away with the almost worthless one cent coin.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Stock Up On... Pennies?
Want to quintuple your money? Buy pennies... lots of them. If this happens, you'll be rich.
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Pfft. They've been trying to kill the penny for years!
ReplyDeleteLong live the penny! Ann takes a penny to preschool for tzedakah every day. My father keeps a big bag of them in his store, and when he takes her to school once a week or so, he gives her a couple of his pennies. My frugal daughter has figured out that she stands to gain somehow if she "forgets" to give her tzedakah when I give her the money, but when she has Saba's pennies, she's more than happy to give them away.
ReplyDeleteAhh, kids.
The US Mint already realized this, and passed a law back in December banning the melting (or mass exportation) of pennies and nickels. http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=2725597&page=1
ReplyDeleteViolators of these new laws can be fined up $10,000 fine or be imprisoned up to five years.
The continued minting of pennies is inexplicable in my eyes. Is the economic benefit to be accrued from a having a more sensitive monetary system greater than the economic loss (time wastage) caused by people having to fish through a pile of pennies in their wallets to find coins of a higher denomination?
in australia they got rid of 1 and 2 cent coins quite a few years ago. i'm not sure of the exact reason but now the lowest coin we have is 5 cents so everything is rounded up or down. and it doesn't seem to have caused any problems. to be honest though, i'm finding the pennies (here in the USA) rather annoying... you need so many just to make up a dollar :P
ReplyDeleteLT - Which they should NOT, in my opinion, unless this is really bad...
ReplyDeleteRM - LOL. Smart girl...! A penny saved... :)
Josh M - Yes, that was noted in the article I believe. And I hear ya on the economic loss, though I wonder how true that really comes out to be. (Perhaps people who've spent an extra min in a store fishing for coins feels rushed and therefore works faster?)
Sarah - Aussies are nuts. No proofs there! :P
We don't have 1 agarot coins, so when the bill isn't divisible by 5, the stores usually profit.
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