Seriously, though… Pennies to me are garbage. Refuse. When a person hands them to me they might as well be giving me blank slugs of metal. I’ve got no use for them and they get thrown into the trash at the earliest opportunity.
I try and not get them, but it’s a lot for the cashier to grasp when you say “I’m all set with pennies” or “No pennies please”. They often just give you a blank stare and hand you the pennies anyway.
This is one of my pet peeves. Get rid of that pesky penny; it’s nothing but a nuisance.
mistee wrote
Two things you’re missing here:
a) if there were no pennies, you wouldn’t be any richer. You would either have more nickels (which means you’d have the exact same amount in your bank), or you’d have a few extra dollar bills in your life. Without pennies, you’ll still pay the same amount for things on average, just that it’ll round to the nickel instead of the penny.
b) If the change in your bank was random, i.e. whatever was in your pocket, you dumped in, then yes, you would end up with an aweful lot of pennies, maybe half of all the coins. But those pennies don’t make up $500, they make up closer to $40. The bigger coins are far “denser” financially-speaking. Imagine a jar filled with half pennies and half quarters. It may be worth $100, but over $97 of that would be quarters.
point a:
I am not “richer” because of the pennies, I always had the money. It was easier to save the pennies because alone they are not worth much. It took time for them to add up.
to point b:
The change in the bank wasn’t random. It was mostly pennies. The other change is easier to spend. There weren’t many quarters at all in the bank.
I don’t count out 10 pennies to pay for something that is $5.10, I would use a dime and keep all 10 pennies in the bottom of my purse/pocket and deposit them in the bank at the end of the day.
The five guilder coin was rarely seen? Hardly. I used them all the time when I lived there. It was one of my favorite coins ever. It was worth NLG 5 (about $2.30 then) and you could actually buy something of value just with the change in your pocket. Often I would go days without having to break out my bills. I couldn’t have done this without my trusty NLG 5 coins!
And the NLG 2 1/2 coins were great too! They were used a lot in vending machines and video games (3 for a rijksdaalder), also for pool.
Using these large denomination coins in NL made me a big advocate of replacing bills with $1 and $2 coins here in the USA.
But the best thing was: rounding of everything to the nearest “5 cents”-- no pennys at all. Now you have them again with the euro.
I’m not one to throw pennies out. I mean, they are still money, after all. I still save them when I get them, but I try to keep from getting too many of them, so I use them on purchases that end in 1 or 6 so I can get nickels, dimes and quarters back. I like to save change in thie big Coca-Cola bottle bank that sits about two feet high, and when it’s full roll it all up and cash it in at the bank. I stopped keeping pennies in this back so they go in their own little jar. I wouldn’t miss the penny if we were to do away with it.
Firstly, http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_334.html. According to cecil it’s worth it to pick up pennies from the street, so it’s presumably worth it to keep any you get. Of course, tipping or charity is also acceptible, but the point it they’re not worthless.
However, IMHO, they’re a hassle. I say we all follow Australia.
I don’t like pennies much either, but I still pick them up off the ground.
You’d be amazed how much money I’ve found on the ground because people just stand there and dump all their pennies.
It’s not really a LOT, but heck a few extra bucks is nothing to sneeze at.
Abolish the penny? But that’s the cheapest and most abundant tread depth indicator in the world! I always keep a penny in the car for good luck. I don’t know if it really works (and I rarely use it to check tread depth), but who wants to take the chance? Not me! 
You will often discover one already in there if you buy used. A penny that came with the car is especially lucky. Of course, when you sell the car, the penny goes with it. It’s bad juju to withhold luck from the next owner.
What I’d like to see happen is the revaluation of the dollar. Keep the old stuff in circulation but stop making it. Issue new bills and coins with different designs but with a value of ten times the old stuff. A N$10 (ten newdollars) bill would replace the old hundred dollar. A N$100 bill would be worth 1,000 old dollars (I miss all the high-value bills that they used to use as legal tender). a N$1 coin would actually be worth carrying around, even if you didn’t like the size of it (they should take the opportunity to increase the size difference between the new quarter and the new dollar coin).
Of course, nobody at the Treasury Department ever listens to me. (They’re such a clique!) 
–SSgtBaloo
I lived in Australia when they abolished 1- and 2-cent coins, and it certainly maid life easier without increasing prices.
Given that in the US people pay sales tax on most transactions, the total is currently rounded, to the nearest cent. On balance, if totals were rounded to the nearest 5 cents, no one would lose.
Some may find this sort of thing amusing; I know I do:
Here is an interesting site where they show how big various numbers are using pennies. Here is their page describing a billion pennies, the number the U.S. Mint cranks out each month.
Also, here is friend misstee’s $500, one cubic foot of pennies, weighing over 300 pounds.
I say get rid of the penny, and round all purchases up to the nearest dime. Then send all the accumulated money toward paying off the national debt.
Per purchase, the most you’d end up “losing” would be 9 cents. Call it the National Debt Adjustment.
Or better yet, collect the money, and on Dec. 31 each year hold a National Lotto, drawing a SSN out of a giant top hat, and the winner takes all.
Happy
Yeah, but we HOJM noticed that they take a cut! That’s usury! ;j
This Thread addressed the issue and also took on $1 bills vs. coins and is going to be statisticified, conbcatenated, summeried and sent to the Mint, the Treasury Dept and Big Daddy W., in case they want to do anything about it.
I agree with this argument, but the problem has now become that too few Americans even remember being able to buy something with just a penny, or a nickel, or let’s face it, even a quarter. As a result, to the popular mind change serves merely to divide money into infinitesimal amounts, on the assumption that not having that ability will result in consumers being ripped off.
It’s true that Britain and the Continent have kept their “pennies”, but there’s an important difference, in that they have abolished low-value paper, and can routinely make many day-to-day purchases with coins only. This means they can reach into their pockets, pull up a handful of relatively valuable coins, and pay for things. In this scenario they’re much more likely to use their ‘pennies’ to make up an exact amount than we would be, because their already looking through their coins anyway. THis means the pennies don’t accumulate as much as they do with us, and they remain in circulation. Whereas in the U.S., 99% of purchasces require the use of paper money, which most of us keep in a different place, and which requires two hands to complete the transaction. We have to extract our wallets with one hand, and fish out the bills with the other. We’re far less likely to dig for change to make up the exact amount.
I made the argument in another one of these discussions, that if you offered 10 people $100 either in loose pennies or $20 bills, virtually all would take the bills. This suggests that that the bills have a greater perceived value than the pennies, even though their denominated value is exactly the same. Even if you offered gradually larger amounts in pennies, people would still undoubtedly prefer the $100 in paper, until the difference is so great as to make it worthwhile handling the pennies. Currency possesses a value based partly on its ease of use, and in the sense that pennies must be laboriously packed, or traded into a CoinStar machine at a loss, they have less value. The diminuation of that value is, IMO, a cost to all of us.
? I think the smallest euro I have seen was a .10 euro … I know it is the smallest one I currently have on hand.
OK, they do have a .01 and .02 euro coin…but I never saw them.
And why would France bother minting them…they round to the nearest .00 or .05 … and have for at least 20 years.
You mean there are places that still have them?
When I lived in South Bend, IN, when my change jar was full (and yes, I do save pennies, and have saved substantial sums of money in them) I would take it to the bank, hand the coins to the teller with a deposit slip, and go away. Few days later, I’d get a receipt in the mail telling me how much my deposit was.
Then I moved to Vegas.
Banks will not accept unrolled coins. No, we do not have one of those change counting machines. No, we do not have one of those change counting machines.
Coinstar is evil. I refuse to use them. I am not giving up 8% of my own hard-earned money to some machine. I’ll roll my own change, thank you.
Recently, it occurred to me that casinos have change counting machines, at least the ones that haven’t gone to those evil ticket thingies do. So from now on, I’ll just take my jar change to Arizona Charlies and let them count it for me.
My grandparents, whenever they had loose change, would put most of it in a boot-shaped “piggy bank”. When it was full, my sister and I would empty it out, count it up and split it up between us.
We wouldn’t actually keep the change, but give it to our father in exchange for cash. He didn’t mind when we were younger, since he owned a taxi cab, and was used to containers full of change.
Then, Canada decided to get rid of the one-dollar bill, and replaced it with our famous “loony”. Soon after, my sister and I noticed that we were getting more of a return from our “boot”. Then, Canada got rid of the two-dollar bill, and replaced it with the “toony”. And our “boot” returns increased again!
I’m still waiting for the five-piece. I’d be happy if that was as far as Canada went in switching from paper to coinage. But I suppose a ten-piece would be alright. But we may need stronger pockets.
And, for those who don’t know why we call our one-piece a “loony”, it’s because there’s a picture of a loon on it. (No, not the Prime Minister. 
) From there, it’s easy to understand why we call the two a “toony”.
However, the one-piece wasn’t supposed to have a loon on it. Originally, it was supposed to have two “First Natives” in a canoe on it. But, the plates for the mint were stolen, so they had to come up with something else.
Which makes me wonder, if the original plates hadn’t been stolen, what exactly would Canadians have called their new one-dollar coin? And from there, what would we have called the two-piece.
As for pennies, they stink! Literally. When my sister and I would sort change, she refused to count the pennies. So, I got the pennies and dimes, while she counted the nickles and quarters. (IMO, for counting the pennies, I should have gotten the quarters, while she got the nickles and dimes.)
Anyhoo…
Oops, you are completely correct. I now remember the “vijvjes” also. It’s been a few years now that we have the Euro, but I still calculate prices in Guilders. I wonder how many other people still do that. I really liked the “vijfjes” because they were smaller than the “rijksdaalders” but thick and hefty. I loved having a wallet with a couple of “vijfjes”, because you were carrying a pretty large amount of money, and no bills whatsoever!
And those .01 and .02 Euro coins are a real pain now. I just checked and currently my wallet contains the following coins:
4 x 1 Euro
6 x 0.50 Euro
2 x 0.20 Euro
2 x 0.10 Euro
5 x 0.05 Euro
2 x 0.02 euro
1 x 0.01 Euro
That’s 7.90 Euros, or US$9.65. Now, I would like to see an American get almost ten dollars in change with just 22 coins.
It’s theoretically possible, but without the new dollar coins that so many people complain about, it would have to be mostly in the old half-dollar pieces which are almost never seen. Each one of those is about the size of one of the old 5-mark coins; no way you could get 18 of those in your wallet. God I wish we could revise the whole system here.