Canada To Stop Making Pennies 473
New submitter butilikethecookie writes with news that the 2012 federal budget for Canada calls for the Royal Canadian Mint to stop producing pennies. "The budget calls the lowly penny a 'burden to the economy.' 'It costs the government 1.6 cents to produce each new penny,' the budget says, adding the government will save about $11 million a year with its elimination (PDF). Some Canadians, it says, consider the penny more of a nuisance than a useful coin. ... Rounding prices will become the norm as the penny is gradually removed from circulation, the budget says. If consumers find themselves without pennies, cash transactions should be rounded to the nearest five-cent increment 'in a fair and transparent manner,' it says. Noncash payments such as checks and credit cards will continue to be settled by the cent, however."
Re:I'll own up to it...I throw them away (Score:5, Informative)
Are they still copper in the US?
No, they are Zinc. But even the Zinc is worth more than the face value of a penny.
Re:I'll own up to it...I throw them away (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'll own up to it...I throw them away (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe in Canada, not in the US. If you ARE referring to the US, you are thinking about it's illegal to DEFACE currency, meaning revalue it.
Re:DST (Score:5, Informative)
I think he was implying that daylight saving time was one of the reasons Canada looks silly (just like the US) and eliminating daylight saving time would make them look less silly.
No, all I need to make the US look silly are bunches of 3-letter acronyms: DHS and TSA to name two.
Re:I'll own up to it...I throw them away (Score:5, Informative)
According to the Canadian Mint, the final run of pennies are primarily a steel-based alloy:
Composition: 94% steel, 1.5% nickel, 4.5% copper plating or copper plated zinc
Weight (g): 2.35
They're mostly Zinc (Score:5, Informative)
Wikipedia to the rescue. They're 97.5% zinc, 2.5% copper [wikipedia.org], and have been that way since 1983.
Re:It begins.... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, no it does not. The dime is currently the lowest denomination that, so far, costs less than its face value to produce. It costs roughly 7 cents to make a nickel (and only 4 cents to make a dime). For what it's worth, right now, quarters cost ten cents to produce, loonies about 15 cents, and twonies about 30 cents.
But coins are insanely expensive compared to bills. Printed paper bills cost about 10 cents each. The newer plastic bills that Canada has started to use cost about 19 cents to manufacture, but last more almost 3 times as long (the plastic can also be reused to print other bills later, so the cost on the polymer bills will probably drop over time, although it probably will not ever be as cheap as the paper ones are).
Re:I'll own up to it...I throw them away (Score:5, Informative)
You linked an article in a newspaper. I'm referencing the actual law. btw, did you bother to READ the rest of the comments on the /. post you referenced? They pretty much nullified the post.
The last line is most relevant. DOUBLE WRONG!
Section 331 of Title 18 of the United States code provides criminal penalties for anyone who fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the Mints of the United States. This statute means that you may be violating the law if you change the appearance of the coin and fraudulently represent it to be other than the altered coin that it is. As a matter of policy, the Mint does not promote coloring, plating or altering U.S. coinage: however, there are no sanctions against such activity absent fraudulent intent.
Re:I'll own up to it...I throw them away (Score:5, Informative)
I stand corrected. The link does not carry rule of law . . . . . but a bit more searching provided the actual regulation.
http://www.usmint.gov/downloads/consumer/FederalRegisterNotice.pdf [usmint.gov]
Interesting that it doesn't state that it replaces the prior law, I guess we get to choose which law we follow?
Here in Holland (Score:4, Informative)
Here in Holland we don't use Eurocents anymore. Before the Euro, when we used Dutch Guilders (0,45 Euro) we already stopped using cents. The smallest coin then was 5 cents.
When we got the Euro in 2001 we shortly used the Eurocent. But soon it was discarded. Every shop now rounds to 5 Eurocent. Only when you use your debitcard you pay in cents.
At first there were some people complaining about losing cents in the rounding, but now most people can accept it. Of course rounding goes both ways anyway.
I already think 5 Eurocents is too much hassle to bother with. But I guess that one will last for some years to come.
Re:I'll own up to it...I throw them away (Score:5, Informative)
People who pay with exact change make window tellers VERY grateful. Dollar bills and pennies always ran low.
I got to the point I would also make piles of change ready for future cars, assuming they would pay entirely in bills. Such a time saver...
The catch is, if you do NOT have your exact change ready, don't dig for it. Just don't. I can break that $20 faster than you can dig out that quarter.