Sunday, July 02, 2006

Save the Penny!!!

They're talking about getting rid of the penny again. It seeems it costs 1.2 cents to make the 1 cent coin. Incidentally, it costs more than 5 cents to make a nickel, but no one is talking about getting rid of those. If it's hitting the penny and nickel already, the dime and quarter can't be far behind.

We almost had that one problem once before, but they changed most of the copper in a penny over to zinc. Apparently there is no metal suitable to switch to that is cheap enough.

I have an idea however. If it costs 1.2 cents to make a penny, have a national penny redemption day (or week), say around Lincoln's birthday, in which people can redeem their hordes of pennies for 1.1 cent apiece. The national mint saves a little money, but it gets all of those millions of stored pennies back in circulation, and the mint wouldn't have to make any for a year or two.

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