Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

Re:Is It Time to Kill the Penny? by smichel17 on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @07:36AM (#23830690)

At least in the US, bills are much different from regular printer paper, closer to fabric. As long as you're not taking them for a swim regularly, they should be fine. (That said, when I've lived in Germany, I very much enjoyed the existence of €1 and €2 coins -- I've written about it on here before, if you're willing to scroll very far back in my post history).

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Re:Is It Time to Kill the Penny? by ghaff on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @08:43AM (#23831176)

>I very much enjoyed the existence of €1 and €2 coins

Uggh. When I travel in Europe--especially Germany with its remaining heavy use of cash--I hate coinage that is sufficiently valuable that I can't just basically ignore it. The US seriously tried to do a dollar coin (the Susan B. Anthony)--which was arguably ill-conceived for at least a couple of reasons but I'm very happy with US coinage being basically loose change although I'd be happy to eliminate basically disposable pennies and maybe even nickels.

Though to tell the truth I normally use cash so seldom and/or at so few places in the US that it probably doesn't matter.

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Re:Is It Time to Kill the Penny? by lostapathy on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @09:58AM (#23832005)

The US still mints several dollar coins - although the Susan B Anthony coins haven't been minted in over 20 years.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_coin_(United_States)#Sa...

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Re:Is It Time to Kill the Penny? by ghaff on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @11:19AM (#23832947)

I forgot about the Sacagawea dollar which did solve the fact that the Susan B Anthony coins were too much like quarters. Haven't seen one in the wild for years though. I didn't even know the other two but they're apparently not in general circulation.

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Re:Is It Time to Kill the Penny? by Mountain_Skies on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @04:56PM (#23837743)

Vending machines in post offices were the only place I regularly received dollar coins. Since most other vending machines accepted them, I never had much trouble using them up. The post office has removed most vending machines now so pretty much the only way I'd ever end up with a dollar coin would be if I bought a roll from my bank.

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Re:Is It Time to Kill the Penny? by smichel17 on Wednesday July 15, 2020 @07:19AM (#23843670)

> I hate coinage that is sufficiently valuable that I can't just basically ignore it.

Funny, that's basically the inverse of the reason I liked it — it allowed me to ignore cash some time.

The wonders of search helped me find my old comment without scrolling, here's more detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22502882

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