The Penny...RIP

[C_Dave45]

FINALLY!!! Can't wait to get these damn things out of circulation...


Canada kills the penny (http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/news/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/29/budget-2012-federal-canada)

[arian_ma]

Great news about the Penny but wtf do they mean by this:


OAS is the government’s single largest program, and the cost is expected to grow from $38-billion in 2011 to $108-billion in 2030 as Canadians live longer and as fewer workers emerge to fill positions vacated by retirementFewer workers emerge? Are they high?

[Mibz]

Baby boomers are retiring and the bullshit positions they held will go away :P

[BigMass]

They’ll stop making the penny but will the current stockpile remain in circulation? Also will businesses round up cash purchases to the nearest penny while credit card or debit is calculated to the penny? How will this go down exactly

[ZenOps]

Figured it would have to happen sooner or later. I'm actually glad this happened in my lifetime, as there will be a short period of time to gain some wealth scavenging the corpse of the old monetary system.

The US is on the cusp of getting rid of their 8-gram $1 copper coin too.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57342452-503544/obama-administration-halts-production-of-$1-presidential-coin/

Not enough demand. It seems just like noone uses pennies, noone uses dollar coins either (its been suggested that a $1 coin is too small a denomination as well)

If gasoline hits $10/gallon like it is in the UK, it will be $100 bills defacto to fill up your tank.

[Mar]

The last I heard they were going to round up on odd numbers and down on even.
$1.00 = $1.00
$1.01 = $1.05
$1.02 = $1.00
$1.03 = $1.05
$1.04 = $1.00
$1.05 = $1.05

This is stupid, the physical currency supply depends on an equal division and being able to pay any amount possible. Slowly they'll fade out all currency and we'll be left with this plastic crap.

[davidI]

Finally, happy to see it go! Works well in New Zealand!

[desi112]

Don't matter to me.

[phreezee]

-

[rage2]

Originally posted by Mar
The last I heard they were going to round up on odd numbers and down on even.
$1.00 = $1.00
$1.01 = $1.05
$1.02 = $1.00
$1.03 = $1.05
$1.04 = $1.00
$1.05 = $1.05

This is stupid, the physical currency supply depends on an equal division and being able to pay any amount possible. Slowly they'll fade out all currency and we'll be left with this plastic crap.
Uhh, we round to the nearest penny today. A 25 cent purchase, + 5% GST, works out to 26.25 cents. We don't have quarter cent coins. You can't pay in any amount possible today.

The lowest coin denomination in Hong Kong is 10 cents. They don't have any problems rounding it up/down.

[C_Dave45]

Originally posted by Mar
The last I heard they were going to round up on odd numbers and down on even.
$1.00 = $1.00
$1.01 = $1.05
$1.02 = $1.00
$1.03 = $1.05
$1.04 = $1.00
$1.05 = $1.05



BAHAHAHAHA!!! WHERE do you come up with this shit?!! Hahaha.
They'll do it the same way they do portions of the penny now. Any amount .004 is rounded down, anything .005 and up is rounded up.
So without the penny, anything between .01-.02 is rounded down and any amount between .03-.04 is rounded up. Simple. (or more precisely 0- .024 And .025 -.049)

[schocker]

Lol Marth :rofl:
Glad to see it go away though :clap:

[Go4Long]

Originally posted by rage2

Uhh, we round to the nearest penny today. A 25 cent purchase, + 5% GST, works out to 26.25 cents. We don't have quarter cent coins. You can't pay in any amount possible today.

The lowest coin denomination in Hong Kong is 10 cents. They don't have any problems rounding it up/down.

Yeah, but asians are better at math than most albertans :poosie:

[ZenOps]

Canada never had true plastic money historically, but we did have cardboard token coins during WWII.

http://dumpdiggers.blogspot.ca/2008/06/wwii-canada-meat-ration-token.html

Not many people want to remember those days. Back when government dollars really didn't mean too much - food was allocated on rationing tokens regardless of how much money you had. It was actually kind of communist/socialist...

[Feruk]

This is great. I was in Australia for 4 weeks and saw a penny once. No more of these stupid $99.99 prices. I think what they also should've done is force price tags on shelves and online to have GST priced in. It'd be a lot more convenient.

Also, there is no issue with credit card fees charged to the vendor. They can process say 1000 transactions from a store in a month, but they wouldn't round every single one. They'd add up the total, and round that number. Just because the penny isn't in curculation doesn't mean it won't be used in basic math.

[Eleanor]

Originally posted by Mar
The last I heard they were going to round up on odd numbers and down on even.
$1.00 = $1.00
$1.01 = $1.05
$1.02 = $1.00
$1.03 = $1.05
$1.04 = $1.00
$1.05 = $1.05

This is stupid, the physical currency supply depends on an equal division and being able to pay any amount possible. Slowly they'll fade out all currency and we'll be left with this plastic crap. http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0p8tjWYpj1ql8wa5.jpg

The only thing I'm pissed about is my costs for mocking hookers has gone up 400% :(

[Freeskier]

Yeah I'm in New Zealand at the moment. The smallest coin they have is 10c and all prices are rounded accordingly, it's awesome.

[Boat]

Originally posted by Feruk
This is great. I was in Australia for 4 weeks and saw a penny once. No more of these stupid $99.99 prices. I think what they also should've done is force price tags on shelves and online to have GST priced in. It'd be a lot more convenient.



99.95 isn't much better!

[FraserB]

Originally posted by Mar
The last I heard they were going to round up on odd numbers and down on even.
$1.00 = $1.00
$1.01 = $1.05
$1.02 = $1.00
$1.03 = $1.05
$1.04 = $1.00
$1.05 = $1.05

This is stupid, the physical currency supply depends on an equal division and being able to pay any amount possible. Slowly they'll fade out all currency and we'll be left with this plastic crap.

How do you manage to dress yourself everyday?

[D'z Nutz]

Haha so much for trying to fill this up.

http://www.typicalfish.com/images/beyond/pennies.JPG

I've been dumping my pocket change pennies in here for like the last 15+ years. Time to start rolling them up! Haha How much you guys think is in there? $40? $50? (I just weighed it: 28.2lbs with the bottle) :rofl:

[ZenOps]

And so it begins:

http://www.portlandmint.com/

As of today March 29th, you can purchase one ton of pennies for $4949 (not including shipping, and illegal to ship to Canada)

or one ton of US nickels for $10,984 (not including shipping, and illegal to ship to Canada)

It sure beats the heck out of getting $100 worth of Iron for each of hundreds of thousands of junked 1 ton cars to China.

Massive profits ahead for the scrap metal dealer.

[sabad66]

Originally posted by Feruk
No more of these stupid $99.99 prices.

This is not going to change when the penny is gone.

[ipeefreely]

Originally posted by BigMass
They’ll stop making the penny but will the current stockpile remain in circulation? Also will businesses round up cash purchases to the nearest penny while credit card or debit is calculated to the penny? How will this go down exactly


The solution Ottawa is proposing is to do away with the penny in cash transactions. Instead of fiddling with a few cents at the cash register, prices will be rounded up or down to the nearest five-cent increment.

That rounding will happen after any applicable sales taxes have been implemented.

Pennies themselves will continue to hold their inherent cash value, so Canadians can always trade them in at financial institutions, a government press release was quick to note.

But banks will then return those pennies to the mint for recycling into their base materials. That means before too long, the penny will be mostly removed from the Canadian economy — except for the jars in Canadians' closets.

Credit, debit and cheque transactions will be unaffected, so one cent is still going to be the base unit of Canadian currency.

But once the mint stops cranking out the 7,000 tonnes worth of pennies a year it currently makes, there's going to be a lot less copper jiggling in the pockets of Canadians


CBC - Penny (http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2012/03/29/federalbudget-flaherty-penny-cent.html)

[HiTempguy1]

Originally posted by sabad66

This is not going to change when the penny is gone.

I would tend to agree, the *.99 is actually a marketing tool. If you were to see an item for $4 or $3.99 (not at the same time mind you), you would be more inclined to buy the item at $3.99, even though there really is not a difference between the two.

That's a really watered down version of the whole concept, but ya, don't expect it to be scrapped anytime soon.

[davidI]

Originally posted by sabad66

This is not going to change when the penny is gone.

I wish they'd make this change along with the penny change - all taxes included in retail prices. That's how it is in so much of the world...it's so nice going up to the register and being able to hand over $20 even for something.

[01RedDX]

.

[ZenOps]

What I find sad:

Is that they couldn't make Iron a "sustainable" substitute metal for the penny. Iron ore being $12 per ton back in 2001 (and now $180 per ton in 2011)

Even though Iron is a good 40x less expensive than copper, and 10x less expensive than zinc - it still couldn't be saved.

[C_Dave45]

Originally posted by ZenOps
What I find sad:

Is that they couldn't make Iron a "sustainable" substitute metal for the penny. Iron ore being $12 per ton back in 2001 (and now $180 per ton in 2011)

Even though Iron is a good 40x less expensive than copper, and 10x less expensive than zinc - it still couldn't be saved.
You find it SAD?!?!! You actually WANT the penny??

I can't stand the friggin things. I literally throw them in the garbage when I'm cleaning my truck, pocket, couches....literally...in the garbage.

And nothing irritates me more than when I have to break loonies or quarters for a mere cents on a purchase. Stores that don't have "penny jars" by the cash register...:banghead:

[Sugarphreak]

...

[Xtrema]

Originally posted by D'z Nutz
Haha so much for trying to fill this up.

I've been dumping my pocket change pennies in here for like the last 15+ years. Time to start rolling them up! Haha How much you guys think is in there? $40? $50? (I just weighed it: 28.2lbs with the bottle) :rofl:

I had half as much and got $44 out of it. Nothing over 10 cents

And bring it to BMO. No fee.

[ZenOps]

Originally posted by C_Dave45

You find it SAD?!?!! You actually WANT the penny??

I can't stand the friggin things. I literally throw them in the garbage when I'm cleaning my truck, pocket, couches....literally...in the garbage.

And nothing irritates me more than when I have to break loonies or quarters for a mere cents on a purchase. Stores that don't have "penny jars" by the cash register...:banghead:

Of course I do. Iron pennies, well - maybe they are a nuisance as I still think of them only being $12 per ton.

But silver quarters and dimes used to circulate everywhere before 1967, just as actual one ounce $20 gold coins before 1932 were the coins used in circulation, if you had a $20 paper bill you could trade it in at any bank for a $20 one ounce gold coin.

What makes a penny a nuisance? Its because the dollar has depreciated in value so much that it made the penny unfeasable for use with any metal, even too expensive to use Iron. Of which the world mined 2.6 Billion Tons of iron last year.

And that is so sad, that people wonder why they are making nearly a million dollars a year and still have arguably less than what a person had two generations ago.

[broken_legs]

Originally posted by ZenOps


And that is so sad, that people wonder why they are making nearly a million dollars a year and still have arguably less than what a person had two generations ago.

It's also sad that 99% of people on here are cheering the demise of the penny, instead of being outraged that their money is becoming so worthless that it's actually becoming a burden to them.

:facepalm:

[dirtsniffer]

I'm 25 and I've never valued the penny. Glad to see it being phased out.

[max_boost]

Originally posted by schocker
Lol Marth :rofl:
Glad to see it go away though :clap: Like I said, anytime Mar posts in a thread, it usually delivers. :D

[Modelexis]

Mr. B Legs says it best.

[01RedDX]

.

[dirtsniffer]

only affects me when people quote him.... lol

[D'z Nutz]

Originally posted by Xtrema


I had half as much and got $44 out of it. Nothing over 10 cents

And bring it to BMO. No fee.

Haha awesome, thanks for the heads up!

[Mar]

What I posted wasn't wrong......that's what I last heard.
True or not I don't really care, I'm just passing on what I last heard. I never said it was fact.

[Hakkola]

Originally posted by Mar
Slowly they'll fade out all currency and we'll be left with this plastic crap.

Which makes it tougher to buy certain things.

[Neil4Speed]

Sounds like the government is promoting Nickelback :devil:

[BigMass]

This will actually benefit guys like zenops because it should now be legal to melt down pennies for copper as they are no longer official currency. This will actually increase the value of a Canadian penny to more than just value hoarding. Ie. Before even if copper was through the roof you couldn’t legally melt down a penny for the copper, but now you can.

[ZenOps]

I can imagine there may be a lot of pressure on nickels if they are going to round everything to the nearest 5 cents.

Anyhow, just for reference:

http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=iron-ore&months=360

Yeesh, I remember the good old days when you used to be able to get a ton of iron for $12. And by good old days, I mean ten years ago.

http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=copper&months=360

Copper topped out at an astonishing $10,000 per ton just a little while ago. A ton of copper being a cube about 47 centimeters each side.

[Neil4Speed]

Originally posted by BigMass
This will actually benefit guys like zenops because it should now be legal to melt down pennies for copper as they are no longer official currency. This will actually increase the value of a Canadian penny to more than just value hoarding. Ie. Before even if copper was through the roof you couldn’t legally melt down a penny for the copper, but now you can.

Good idea if you have some old ass pennys, but anything in the last 15 years or so has had very little copper in composition.

0.1057g of copper each, means you would need ~9500 for a KG of copper, which is only worth $10 or so anyway

If you had the older ones, and allot of them, you would need about 315 for a kg, which would obviously be profitable.

[ZenOps]

There are actually quite a few old copper pennies left.

About 35% to 40% of Canadian pennies in circulation are still copper, as we made copper pennies all the way to 1996. The rest are either zinc cored or steel cored.

Its the US that has an extremely low percentage of copper pennies left because they debased their penny back in 1982.

That actually makes it feasable for a refiner to simply melt pennies of any type and seperate out the metals later.

Nickel nickels are quite rare, only about 9 to 10% of them still exist in circulation. 1967 and older Silver dimes and quarters, about 0.1%.

[Feruk]

Originally posted by sabad66
This is not going to change when the penny is gone.
How could it not? With GST that comes to $104.99. I don't wanna pay $105, and when pennies are gone, will the store simply expect to keep the penny? Just curious how you see it working; I don't much care about the penny.

[schocker]

Originally posted by Feruk

How could it not? With GST that comes to $104.99. I don't wanna pay $105, and when pennies are gone, will the store simply expect to keep the penny? Just curious how you see it working; I don't much care about the penny.
Then pay with your credit or debit card :confused:

[speedog]

Originally posted by Feruk
How could it not? With GST that comes to $104.99. I don't wanna pay $105, and when pennies are gone, will the store simply expect to keep the penny? Just curious how you see it working; I don't much care about the penny.
If you're going to pay for a transaction using a cheque, debit or credit card, then nothing changes - only cash transactions change...

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Politics/2012/03/29/PennyDead.jpg

Our retail business sees just under 13% of it's total sales as cash sales and that percentage has been decreasing on a steady basis over the years. The rounding up or down of transactions will prove to be a wash for our business and I've got plenty of other things that are much more important to worry about as opposed to figuring out how to get an extra penny here or there from the consumer and besides that, if a customer has a variety of items included in their cash purchase, then any attempt by retailer intending to work the system could very work against them.

And as an example, over the past week we saw $1,258.09 of cash sales - rounding up or down to the nearest nickel would have meant that we would have lost $0.04 over that same week which represents a heady loss of 0.003% to us. Yupp, keeping that penny is certainly worth worrying about.

[BigMass]

Looks like I was wrong. The penny will continue to remain legal currency even after the government stops production and starts melting them down. Meaning it will continue to remain illegal to melt down a penny (unless you’re the royal mint)

[ZenOps]

It may remain illegal to melt - In Canada.

But the whole reason they are doing this is to support Britain. Britain has fallen so far as to also debase their 5 and 10 pence from 25% nickel/75% copper to 2% nickel with steel core.

And Canada's export restriction on pennies and nickels is $10,000 face value at at time (US export restriction is $100 worth of pennies and nickels)

Technically, one need only drive pennies across the border, and then put them up in the global marketplace.

[sabad66]

Originally posted by Feruk

How could it not? With GST that comes to $104.99. I don't wanna pay $105, and when pennies are gone, will the store simply expect to keep the penny? Just curious how you see it working; I don't much care about the penny.
Everything will be 'business as usual', but if you happen to be paying cash they will round the after-tax final price to the nearest $.05. So in this scenario, yes, they will make an extra penny off you. But if it is $105.01 you get a 1 cent discount.

[Modelexis]

So now your 'two cents worth' will actually be worth nothing?

[Mar]

So in fairness this would mean they round it pre-tax, correct? Wouldn't it be illegal to round up on something that doesn't exist? So something that cost $99.97 with tax should be $104.95, not $105.

[dirtsniffer]

Originally posted by Modelexis
So now your 'two cents worth' will actually be worth nothing?

Yep. Carry on, business as usual.. For you.

[Mibz]

Originally posted by Mar
So in fairness this would mean they round it pre-tax, correct? Wouldn't it be illegal to round up on something that doesn't exist? So something that cost $99.97 with tax should be $104.95, not $105. So you buy something for $12.34, they round it to $12.35, add tax and you get $12.9675.

Now what?

All rounding is done at the end of the transaction.

[colsankey]

They would round after the tax calculation, no before would they not?

So 12.34 + 5% (12.957) = 12.96 => 12.95

[ZenOps]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-to-scrap-penny-this-year/article2386120/?utm_medium=Feeds%3A%20RSS%2FAtom&utm_source=Home&utm_content=2386120

"Federal officials said more than 35 billion pennies have been minted in Canada in the past 104 years. This, they noted Thursday, would weigh 94 million kilograms – or as much as 1,500 Leopard 2 tanks."

Haha! Now that is funny. Canadian pennies are Bronze (copper with tin) or zinc, or steel, which would never be used for making tanks.

I think someone is hinting at something.

Nickel is what would be used to make a Leopard tank, and we only made 1.85 Billion nickel nickels, the vast majority of the ones before 1955 were already melted for the two war efforts.

By my calculation... There are enough nickels to make exactly 42 Leopard 2 tanks.

[speedog]

Originally posted by Mar
So in fairness this would mean they round it pre-tax, correct? Wouldn't it be illegal to round up on something that doesn't exist? So something that cost $99.97 with tax should be $104.95, not $105. C'mon, this ain't fucking rocket science.

[schocker]

Don't line up behind marth at the supermarket anyone. It is going to be an uphill battle :rofl:

[C_Dave45]

Originally posted by Mar
So in fairness this would mean they round it pre-tax, correct? Wouldn't it be illegal to round up on something that doesn't exist? So something that cost $99.97 with tax should be $104.95, not $105.

:facepalm:


What happens to all those "fractions of pennies?"!!!!


iLw9OBV7HYA


(fast forward to 2:36)

D0vqXSTBQ3M

[Sentry]

You know you're old when you post Superman III instead of Office Space in regards to fractions of cents being rounded.

Filmed mostly around High River by the way. :D

[ZenOps]

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/03/u-s-penny-to-be-kept-as-canada-bids-coin-farewell/

US chimes in:

They spend 2.4 cents to make a zinc cored penny. Zinc is on average about 1/4 the cost of copper (Its no wonder they stopped using copper in 1982)

They also spend 11.12 cents to make a 5-cent nickel. They never produced a pure nickel in their 150 year history. If they did - it would probably cost much closer to 20 cents to manufacture.