Pennies punched through & used in GE appliances as substitute

[blackstone]

Fascinating article about U.S. pennies; including their use in GE washers. Anyone every find one of these machines that had pennies replacing copper washers?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/01/magazine/worthless-pennies-united-states-economy.html

 

[DADoES]

 
<blockquote>Most pennies produced by the U.S. Mint are given out as change but never spent ...</blockquote> Not true for me.  I use pennies when I have them for the exact amount on a cash purchase.

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

See pennies a plenty too, and doubt there are any real penny hoarders, or that any such keeping pennies out of circulation will help the said overabundance being as catastrophic as this study proclaims...

That very 1976 cited, was the year Andy Rooney declared in a book I'd read by him how pennies such become obsolete and everything figured and rounded to the nearest dollar...

Merely citing his many opinions on many such topics, and no surprise to devoted one chapter in his book to decrying how "Pennies are So Useless", and just the many he was himself thought to be hopelessly hoarding he'd cited, rather than routinely spending as the rest of many do...

-- Dave

 

[ea56]

I spend my pennies all the time when I’m paying cash.  I try to give exact change if I can.  If I see a penny on the sidewalk I’ll  pick it up too.  About 6 months ago David and I were on a walk and we spotted a quarter at the same time and we both bent down to pick it up.  We then noticed a trail of coins that stretched for almost a block, and we each picked it all up.  When we got home and counted it out it came to over $9.00.  Some people are just plain careless with coins, can’t be bothered to spend them.

 

When I was still working about 25 years ago I was eating my lunch in the break room and I heard all this racket behind me and turned around to see where it was coming from.  I saw my Lead Worker throwing handfuls of pennies into the garbage can.   I asked her what she was  doing and she said she was cleaning out her purse and getting rid of all the change.   I told her she’ll always have money problems if she literally threw it away.

 

Now mind you, this was a young woman that was always crying poor mouth.  She’d refi her mortgage at the drop of a hat to pull the equity out for some foolishness, like going on a Disney Cruise!  

 

Doesn’t surprise me at all that there are so many pennies out of circulation.  Cash is fast becoming something many don’t use anymore, scan a card or touch your phone to the POS.

I’ll bet if you were to stop several young people on the street and show them a handful of coins they couldn’t even count out how much they totaled and some might not even know the difference between a nickel and a quarter.

 

Eddie

 

[combo52]

Neat article thanks for posting Fred

It was a long article, lol.

It’s way past time that we do away with pennies. I hope somebody has the political will to do it wise up like Canada did. There’s simply no point making pennies anymore

I agree you shouldn’t throw money away. I always save all my pennies And other change in a container about once a year I take it to my credit union where they have a free coin sorting machine and just put it in the bank, but I don’t bother carrying change anymore. It simply doesn’t make any sense at all I don’t generally buy much with cash anymore either .

I do think everybody should turn in their excess Change it’s wasteful because of all the energy that was consumed in mining and making the metal it should be kept in circulation. It’s good environmentally to try to turn your change back in.

John

 

[suburbanmd]

Reply 1

The pandemic interrupted my habit of spending pennies to keep my change supply trim, because I stopped using cash. I haven't picked it up again, because I realized I don't want to be the old guy making everyone wait while he doles out his pennies, even though I was careful to have them ready to go.

 

[ea56]

I  seldom pay with cash anymore, instead I use my credit union VISA or debit cards which give 1.5 reward points for every dollar that I charge on them.  Collect 2500 reward points or more and I can convert them to $25 cash back for every 2500 points.  So far this year I’ve received $150 in cash back and with the current 7100 points I have after I pay the semi-annual car insurance premium later on this month I’ll have enough to get another $75 cash back and have a have  remainder to start on my next $25 cash back.

 

But I still always carry a small black leather change purse in my pocket with anywhere from $0.50 to $2.00 in coins and never more than $100.00 in bills, but usually only $20.00 just for emergencies or for small purchases.

 

I believe that doing away entirely with coins would be onerous for many poor and homeless  people and others that just can’t maintain or open bank accts. or obtain credit cards.  Without coins in circulation all prices would need to be rounded up to the nearest dollar and the only ones that would benefit from this change would be merchants and corporations because their profits would soar.  People think that everything costs too much now, without pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters everything would instantly cost more.

 

It would make better sense for the US Treasury to air spots on TV regularly to encourage citizens to either regularly spend their coins during small purchases or to periodically cash them in for folding money.  If there were readily available change counting machines that folks could dump their coins into and receive bills in exchange this could be easily accomplished.

 

 For these reasons I would be against doing away with coins.

 

Eddie

 

[combo52]

Doing away with coins?

Hi Eddie, nobody has suggested doing away with coins. We were only talking about doing away with pennies as Canada did and many other countries.

I don’t know if you read the whole article or not on pennies, but it also said that it would not affect the poor as very few of them even use Pennies to pay for things. I don’t think there’s a single thing in stores anymore that are price for less than a nickel anyway.

John

 

[ea56]

Hi John,

In all honesty I must admit that I didn’t read the entire article about doing away with pennies.  If only pennies were done  away with I suppose that it wouldn’t be that difficult to adapt to the change.  Everything could be rounded to 5 cents.

 

There are way more important things that need to be changed in America than doing away with pennies.  If the copper is so expensive why not just mint pennies out of pot metal like was done during WWII in  1943?  Or mint them out of aluminum.

 

The fact that people don’t value pennies is a sign of how careless some Americans are with their money.  Charge up a storm and then just file bankruptcy.  I’m old school and still believe that if you watch the cents the dollars will take care of themselves or a penny saved is a penny earned.  It’s worked for me during my life.  I’ve never been broke and never been to proud to bend down and pick up a penny.  I’ve had a checking acct. since 1969 and I’ve balanced it to the penny every single month for over 55 years.  If this makes me an old skinflint I’ll own it.

 

 I was raised that way.  I remember my Mom asking my brother once how he liked the sandwich that she’d packed for his school lunch when he was 8 years old?  He told her that he threw it away!  To which she said, for cryin’ out loud Joey that’s like throwing away a nickel!  She never got over the deprivation of the Depression.

 

Eddie

 

[blackstone]

Read the Article

That was a very interesting article, whether or not you may agree with the value of pennies. On a slow news day like today, the article is worth taking the time to read.

Personally, I don't spend pennies. I put them into a piggy bank, let it fill up, and after a few years(?) I take them to the bank coin sorting machine and get about $33. I very much appreciate when I receive pennies in change, so I have something to put in the piggy bank.

This is my lucky penny, which I picked up on a sidewalk in Peach Springs, AZ, on Route 66 (near the Hualapai Lodge). Just because. Hasn't brought any luck, though.

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

Tried to read the article again just to find the part about thr copper used in GE appliances to no avail...

Oh how I miss buying a lot with cash and my change carrier self-destructed and can't either zip closed or open from the jingle jangle of maybe over $3 it'd been carrying...

It was found under a bush years ago at the house next door, and putting it on the porch meant it being tossed under there again, so it meant that change purse was mine!

I remember that coin shortage, it was impossible to give customers whatever amounts in pennies forcing me to dole out nickels and dimes for amounts pennies would have helped....

Just liked having a variety of denominations in my currency, not high interest rates I'm battling, while debating results in fewer funds, so hope we're not veering into anything excessively gov't releated in this topic...

-- Dave

 

[combo52]

Reasons to discontinue pennies

I am advocating discontinuing them because it’s costing the government over $100 million a year to produce them, costing about three cents apiece.

Pennies have not been made out of copper since 1982, there’s probably no way to really make them cheaper and have them still look like a penny.

I’m sure people throw handfuls of change away, which is very wasteful people throw away much more money in their daily lives and other ways are much more wasteful just the amount of food people throw away alone is amazing people do not have a good regard for money , but I suspect there aren’t that many people throwing away change.

John

 

[countryguy]

Canada stopped using the penny in 2013. When paying for something with cash, the amount is rounded up/down to the nearest $.05. Only when paying by credit or debit card, do you pay the exact amount of the transaction. The $1 paper bill was replaced in 1987 with the 'loonie' coin and the $2 bill in 1996 with the 'toonie' coin.

Gary

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

As far as those penny crushing machines where you put the penny in and a dollar's worth of quarters for making souvenirs, I have a collection of that crushed copper somewhere maybe at my dad's place...

 

If there are still those and people are content to invest $1.01 like that, then there are still a lot more pennies than the world or at least US knows what to do with...

 

The people who waste the most in terms of food must have too much more than they need to eat that it goes bad, so it gets thrown out and out they go again to replenish only to whine about how high grocery prices are and how much they have to spend...

 

They might be the same people who throw coins into wishing wells and fountains, so they compensate however well they can, if they spend the least amount of money buying things (maybe even stealing) from those who make just as little money working in making and selling what they basically need...

 

 

 

-- Dave

 

[rp2813]

I spotted the reverse side of what's known as a "wreather" penny (minted from 1909 - 1958) among all of those pictured.  I thought maybe it was an old image, but then I spotted one of the newer reverse sides with the shield, so that old "wreather" could have been anywhere from 66 to 115 years old!  I received one in change within the last couple of years, which was surprising.  When I was a kid I collected coins, and as I recall there were only a handful of Lincoln pennies that were worth very much.  I think my 1933-D was worth the most.  The big hitters were 1909-S VDB and 1955 "double die obverse" strikes.

 

I don't think pennies make sense anymore, so to speak.  I'll once in a while grab one out of a dish by the cash register to avoid receiving more of them in change, but otherwise I don't carry them with me.  I used to always carry 99c in loose change, but that was back in the days before debit cards.  These days, if you hand a cashier folding money with an extra penny or whatever, they freeze up.  And nobody counts out your change as they hand it to you.  Simple arithmetic seems to have vanished from the retail landscape.

 

[me]

Our low denomination coils, 10p and less are plated steel, they stopped making pennies out of bronze about 16 years ago, and had to switch to using stronger dies to mint them.

Our half penny was scrapped in the 80s, I was pleased to see them go, there was talk in the media of scrapping 2p and 1p, and were various, mostly inane arguments against it, such as it would cause inflation with prices being rounded up, people would be less likely to drop their change in charity boxes, and phrases like "the penny dropped", penny for your thoughts and "spend a penny" would go out of use. There's currently plenty of coins in circulations with usage of physical currency declining, so the government currently have no plans to scrap them.