A free electronic publication about the
weird, unusual, entertaining and funny stuff about coin collecting and money
generally. Most
of the articles will be funny, some might make you think…but above all, most
will be a complete waste of your time.
Volume 1, Number 4 – April 22, 2008
Last Tuesday, I published a few items about
the possible elimination of the cent. Here is part two on things that deal with
the same topic.
For years, surveys have shown that merchants
want to eliminate the cent, while a lot of customers wouldn’t mind if it was
gone. However, the demand on the Royal Canadian Mint is for over 1 billion a
year. Statistically at least, I assume that there is a great demand for the
penny to keep commerce going. I do not believe that tells the whole story,
though. I suspect that the majority of those little pieces of copper…well,
actually, mostly steel…wind up being involved in a transaction exactly once.
Each evening, when I empty my pockets, they
wind up in a drawer. I do not carry cents around from one day to the next, but
leave them at home, only to receive more because I don’t have exact change for
my purchases. I counted the number of cents in my drawer at the beginning of
the month. Since then, I have added another 64, making the present total 401.
The reason it is so low is that a couple of months ago, when the bottom of the
drawer broke out, I rolled them all up and took them to the bank.
If I am typical and you multiply that by
millions of people doing the same, I don’t have to be a rocket scientist to
know where all the cents are going.
In last Tuesday’s bulletin, I asked for your
thoughts on the penny; Here are a few:
Letter #1 – From Matthew Sztym: “I have 3
statements.
- The formula for rounding the penny up to
the nickel would probably be given a budget by the government for $100 million
nation wide to implement. After all the paperwork, court challenges,
"missing funds" and poor handling, the program will exceed the budget
and approach 1 billion in a few years, and around 2 billion by the time it is
properly implemented.
- If the penny is discontinued, everyone who
supported getting rid of the penny will become agitated. Due in fact that
because there is no penny, purchases are automatically rounded for both cash
bearers and debit and credit users. Given the new formula, store owners will
cleverly raise their prices by a few cents so that they always round up, nickel
and dimeing away the bank accounts of the card users
who supported the elimination of the penny.
- Banks will use the elimination as an
opportunity to make money. Because there are no pennies in circulation the bank
can simply round down everyones bank account. Banks,
of course, are not bound by the same rounding formula that stores are, due in
fact that the government did not spend enough money implementing the 2 billion
dollar program. They justify the rounding by stating that if someone closed
their bank account today, we could not pay them the last 4 cents in their
account and they would sue us for taking their money. With this new scheme,
banks will advertise high earning chequing accounts
that compound interest daily. That way every day they add a penny to your
account, and every day they truncate the value back to a nickel.
Those are my 3 cents, but I guess I would
have to give you a nickel.”
If you are taking votes, I vote for
eliminating the Cent in commerce but retaining it in collector sets such as
Proof and Mint Sets. But such a move to eliminate the Cent would require some
other changes in the commercial system such as prices being rounded off to the
nearest Five Cents, gas pumps clicking over to the nearest Five Cents. Incorporating taxes into the advertized or posted prices, etc.
But this could all be done and after a few months/years, no one would notice
any more. The rest of the world has been doing this kind of thing for a long
time, sometimes changing the entire monetary system; e.g. United Kingdon, EU, etc.
Letter #3 - From Ben Boelens:
Eliminate the cent. Many countries have done
so. Try to find a Mexican centavo after 1973 or a Dutch cent after 1980 or a
Letter #4 - From Colin Bruce:
I recently wrote to our local pollee-tician that we should change to aluminum pennies and
use up all the old air force plane carcasses in the vast boneyard
in Arizona...well they just announced scrapping out the boneyard.....for
$$$ Cheezettes.
Letter #5 - From Dan Buss:
If there are 20 billion pennies rattling
around in
Maritime Greetings.....loosing the penny is
like loosing a friend or a loved one....we the consumer will be at a loss if
this happens...what once cost 96 cents....will now cost $1.00... you will not be given the lesser cost of 95 cents...(we
lose) but wait...if your paycheck is say
$249.64 you will be given the lesser amount of
$249.60 (you lose again) open your eyes, not your wallet...you will
always come out on the short end of change. Now when some people go to Timmy's
for their coffee and they get pennies in their change, usually the counter lady
will receive these as a tip (counter coffee people don't get paid as much as
other workers). And some people even give the pennies to the camp for kids. Pennies
do add up. But eliminate the penny and the small change tip goes out the window
with the bath water and the baby. Now the business that you deal with every day
will put their hand into your pocket. Isn't it bad enough that the government
already has their hand in your wallet where the big money is? Be honest.. if you throw away your pennies, do
you throw away your Canadian Tire money as well...give it all to your children
or to a service group: cubs, scouts, guides, etc. There are a lot of needy
groups trying to raise money: United Way, cancer fund, kidney foundation - save
the pennies for them. Better still, if you have a bill and are displeased with
the service, arrange to give them a hand full of pennies - it does work both
ways. FLASH: the government will then do away with the 5 dollar note and now
give you another coin into your pocket. They will do away with the penny and
then give you another bigger coin to take its place in your pocket, not your
wallet. Save your pennies and buy a belt for your pants. You will need it!
Letter #7 - From Ken Grahame:
Of course it should be scrapped –
immediately, with no further discussion. Just look how much time has been taken
up already with discussing it's demise, including reading all that you have
printed on the topic and are about to print next time. Eventually it will
probably be scrapped anyways, so why not just save everyone a whole lot of time
and scrap it right now. Besides, we would probably also save a bunch of trees
that way too, because there would be less articles printed about the subject. So,
which is more important to us: time and trees or the lowly cent? Case closed.
Letter #8 - From
In March I initiated a drive for spare
change in my office - to collect $ for Dr. Roz'
A kindly Jewish gentleman told me the
following joke, but to be politically correct, I have made a slight change,
with apologies to anyone on my distribution list of Scottish descent.
Q. How was copper wire invented?
A. Two Scotsmen were fighting over a copper
penny.
The
Talk about pennies from heaven. A potential shortage of coins in the
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. "History
shows that when coins are worth melting, they disappear," Velde wrote. "Rebasing the penny would ... debase the
five-cent piece and put it safely away from its melting point," he added.
Raw material prices in general have
skyrocketed in the last five years, sending copper prices to record highs.
Copper pennies number 154 to a pound. Since 1982, the U.S. Mint began making
copper-coated zinc pennies to prevent metals speculators from taking advantage
of lofty base metal prices.
Though the penny is losing its importance, the
Mint is making more and more pennies. Velde said that
since 1982 the Mint has produced 910 pennies for every American. Last year
there were 8.23 billion pennies in circulation. "These factors suggest
that, sooner or later, the penny will join the farthing (one-quarter of a
penny) and the hapenny (one-half of a penny) in coin
museums," he said. (End of article.)
The above article caused some people to post
responses. Here are some of them:
- I hate bringing in pennies. The bank
clerks look at you like you just plopped a steaming pile of do-do on their
desk.
- I like paying annoying institutions and government agencies in
pennies - for the exact same reason.
- Here in
NYC, I have had homeless guys say "no thanks" to pennies.
- Udder non cents
- We have groups that complain
about the gas stations rounding off to the nearest cent on their pumps.
- The pennies help the clothing industry by
causing holes in pockets.
- What a centsless
tragedy.
- I don't know why people say pennies aren't
worth the time it takes to wrap them. If I am sitting on my butt at home, I am
not getting paid by anyone. If I wrap $5 in pennies rather than throwing them
away, I've got $5. Would I throw away a $5 bill every few weeks?
- A penny will still buy a kid a ride on a mechanical pony at
Michigan Meijer stores.
You might find the statistics
about pennies at http://www.kokogiak.com/megapenny/
interesting.
2 cents - the most I ever gave my opinions
for. With the discontinuance, would I have to give two-and-a-half times my
opinion to give my nickels worth?
13 cents – amount that Professor Hedy Lee is suing hundreds of Chinese ladies for, which
translates to 1 yuan, Nicknamed China’s
“Complaining Queen,” she has filed complaints to stop public spitting in the street,
queue jumping, littering, public cursing, keeping fowl in their gardens, people
going shopping in their pajamas, passengers throwing up in taxis and other
“shame suits.” She is doing this in a crusade to improve civility in
54 cents - amount (which
is equivalent to 5,000 ruphiah) that you must
contribute for each of five seedlings in
$2.95 - amount that the Canadian
Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)
ordered that Telus must refund to its customers,
after charging them that amount each month if they did not sign up for a
long-distance plan.
$1 - amount that a letter-writer to the
The following letters appeared in the
Toronto Star:
“It’s time to scrap the myth that scrapping
the penny will be inflationary. Companies have been instructed to set prices
based on psychological thresholds. That’s why a $10 item is priced at $9.99,
because it “feels” like $9 to most people. Does anyone believe that companies
will suddenly decide to give up this advantage? Instead, the $9.99 item will
now be priced at $9.95, and this deflationary advantage will carry through on
most purchases. Some people are also afraid that no one will give them a penny
for their thoughts or they won’t be able to put in their two cents. I say
that’s penny wise and pound foolish.” - Eric J. Mantel,
“In your casual dismissal of the penny, you
should keep in mind the large cost to convert every single cash register and
all other computer accounting programs to adjust prices up and down when the
nickel becomes the smallest coin.” - Gary Reid,
A recent letter from Karen Turk-Dynes of Stouffville, Ont., published in the Toronto Star, gave me a
clue where some of the 1.2 billion cents went that the Royal Canadian Mint
struck last year. It appeared in the useful tips column entitled “Reader
Exchange.”
“I love cleaning with vinegar. But the best
use for it I’ve found is for cleaning the scale from a kettle. Simply put a few
pennies in the kettle and then fill half the kettle with white vinegar and the
other half with water. Bring to a full boil. Simply rinse out the kettle with
water and your scale is gone.”
What caught my attention was the ending to
her letter: “Remember to count how many pennies go in so the same amount comes
out.”
So that’s where some of our pennies are
going. You are not checking your kettles!
Tim Hortons Inc.,
When I recently went (actually, it was every
day) to purchase an extra-large hot cappuccino for me and a half coffee/half
chocolate for my wife, rather than paying $3.36 as in the past, the price was
$3.50.
That’s good enough prove for me that they
planned the pricing for the day the cent would be eliminated, eh.
Much ink has been spilled writing about the
importance…or rather lack thereof…of the cent. It would appear that the
majority of people can live without it…except the collectors of proof-like sets
and other Mint products that want the cent to continue to be included in their
collections. In the meantime, I am sure we will be “nickel and diming” the
subject to death.
John Regitko
Your Eh-Bulletin Editor
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