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Change Shortage - Time To Cash In


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From the linked article:

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco reports credit and debit cards accounted for 51% of payments in 2018. Consumers used cash in only 26% of total payments, and most used cash for payments under $10.

And later:

Some coins, like pennies and nickels, cost more to make and distribute than they’re actually worth. In 2019, it cost $0.019 to produce and distribute a penny, and $0.076 to produce and distribute a nickel, according to the U.S. Mint’s 2019 Annual Report.

 

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This has a familiar ring to it. Our neighbours in the Republic of Ireland have had this issue twice in recent history, each time requesting the public 'look in their drawers and stop hoarding money'.

Shortly before they transitioned from the Irish Pound to the Euro in 2002, they stopped making the Pound coinage - resulting in a circulation shortage.

Then 15 years later they found they were short of near-worthless 1 & 2 Euro-cent coins, as people didn't bother using them more than once before putting them in jars, etc.

links:
IrishTimes 2000

IrishIndependant 2014

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8 minutes ago, PimentoUK said:

Then 15 years later they found they were short of near-worthless 1 & 2 Euro-cent coins, as people didn't bother using them more than once before putting them in jars, etc.

If it's anything like here, the 'etc.' includes throwing them on the ground in disgust because of how worthless they are.  I had a (as it turned out, not so) brilliant idea to search a ~ 25 meter long curb strip in an old part of town.  There happened to be 3 or 4 parking meters in that stretch.  I recovered 51 Zincolns and 31 Copper Memorials (only one Wheat penny :sad:) in 3 hours.  But I did get quite a few larger denomination coins (no silver,though), so I guess some of the coins were just accidentally dropped.  (The meters didn't accept pennies, BTW, and why should they since it would require a handful just to get 15 minutes credit!)  I remember when a penny would buy a piece of bubble gum.  Those days are lllllooooonnnnnnnggggggggg gone.

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Yes, throwing them away is another option. In the early 1980's we had a small halfpence coin that was worthless, and they were discarded, children would throw them at each other as weapons, if anyone dropped one, they certainly wouldn't bother picking it up. And rather annoyingly, they target ID identically to a more modern One Pound coin ( about 1.20 US dollars ), which makes cherry-picking these 'valuable' coins more troublesome, in addition to the various aluminium bottletops that ID in that range too.

We're overdue getting rid of our near-worthless 1 pence and 2 pence coins ( = 1 & 2 US cents ), our next denomination, the 5 pence, is cheap to make ( steel cored, nickel-plated outer skin), so it can continue in use for the future. You US guys need to ditch the 1 cent and the 5 cent simultaneously. If just the 1c goes, that puts extra demand on the 5c, which is over-expensive to make, so causes more problems. As your 10c is cheap to make, it's OK to have it as the lowest denomination coin.

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7 minutes ago, PimentoUK said:

You US guys need to ditch the 1 cent and the 5 cent simultaneously. If just the 1c goes, that puts extra demand on the 5c, which is over-expensive to make, so causes more problems. As your 10c is cheap to make, it's OK to have it as the lowest denomination coin.

That's logical.  Our federal government consistently defies such.  They could have gotten rid of cents decades ago.  Our 5 cent 'nickel' at least has use in vending and other mechanical/electrical coin accepting machines so eliminating or replacing it would cause some consternation.  Nothing (except human cashiers, who are probably even more annoyed than I) accept 1 cent coins.

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I do find it amusing that you got rid of the half-cent in the 1860's, yet the next coin to go is still in use 160 years later. US inflation has to be 50-times since then ?
We have managed to lose our lowest-denomination coin a few times, 1956 (farthing) , 1971 ( halfpenny ) 1984 ( decimal halfpenny), but nothing since. We have had higher inflation than you, of course, about 100-times since the late 1800's. [ and trivia : inflation is 5000-times since the Pound Sterling came into use in about 760 AD.]

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I seem to recall (hopefully someone, e.g. Skullgolddiver can confirm or correct) while in Italy around 1990 receiving 1 and 2 Lire coins in change.  This was when the exchange rate was about 1000 Lire to a dollar.  So if I'm remembering correctly, we weren't the worst at that time....  I wonder if those show up in some useful digital TID zone.  (They were pretty tiny....)

 

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Just turned in $112 of pennies, nickels and dimes, no larger denominations. May help some.

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