Since the Eurocents also come in 1, 2 and 5 cent coins, we also don’t accumulate them. Some people are too much in a hurry to bother counting out single cents; instead, they dump all assorted small coins into an empty cream box or similar at home, and then take them to the bank to exchange for bills. Because the courts ruled that banks are not allowed to charge a fee for exchanging coins to bills, or when paying coins into your own account, we don’t need coinstar or similar. The Sparkassen (public interest banks) have machines where you dump a load of change into, it counts the amount and credits to your account. Very useful for small merchants, too.
Well, since 2 Euro is about 4 DM, there’s not much need for higher-value coins.
I am sorry about the rotten design, though. The nicest old coin (in my opinion) was the 50 Pfenning piece, showing a young woman planting a tree, and that’s the one they dropped, keeping the boring oak leaf, the Brandenburger Tor and the vulture.
O be the PITA, smile and hold out your palm, it doesn’t matter if the cashier thinks pennies are useless, and you dont’ have to make up a story about why you want your change (if you had more pennies you might be able to give the exact change next time, but that would hold up the line) - stop the madness Man, man up and get your brown penny!
Which is probably why banks used to pay businesses to accept debit cards.
The cost to a business of processing checks is probably much smaller than the debit card fee (add 'em all up, deposit them at your bank - not free, but probably not $0.25/check either. And I suppose overhead for the cashier handling them). I’d imagine that the bank cost is more significant.
The banks got people used to the ease of swiping vs. writing - and then started charging the businesses.
In any other country it would be a slam dunk. If it’s too expensive to mint a coin even with cheap copper-plated zinc, then it needs to go, because it’s a clear sign that the coin as such is irrelevant to the current price levels. While nickels are marginally more useful, they’re also too big, thick, and heavy for the value they represent. They shouldn’t be any bigger than a penny; that would solve the cost of materials problem.
Perhaps not, but I might disagree with you if I had any notion of general changes in price levels since I was there–and that was a very long time ago. At that time I could walk to the local Italian restaurant and get a nice plate of spaghetti and mussels, accompanied by a glass of Valpolicella and served by a waiter, all for about 7 or 8 DM–only two or three coins for the whole thing, imagine that! I could never have done that in America even back then. The waiter carried a large zippered coin purse from which he gave you your change, and from what I was able to see, most of the restaurant’s receipts came in the form of coins.
I liked that one too. Recently I got a dollar coin in my change[sup]1[/sup] that has a Native American woman tending maize plants, reminding me of the old 50pfg piece.
[sup]1[/sup]Full disclosure: I noticed a handful of dollar coins in a cash register while paying for something, and I asked the cashier to trade them to me for paper dollars.
Dunkin Donuts coffee is delicious. I buy the whole beans from them to make at home.
The lengths people will go to to hold on to the penny are silly. Where is this paranoia coming from that you are going to be cheated out of your pennies left and right?
How often do you meet a vending machine that even takes pennies anymore.
Well.. the materials problem is caused by the fact that the mix of metals is mandated on the mint by law. And Congress is in the pocket of the zinc lobby (for pennies) and I suspect the copper lobby (for nickels). Nickels are 75% copper and 25% nickel.
Then again, I see from the internet that at current prices nickel > copper > zinc.
That is a long time ago! A meal plus drink at an Italian restaurant was 15-20 Marks back in the 90s, and is now the same in Euros, so you need Euro bills. But a pizza on the street is between 2,xx and 4,xx Euros, and lots of other stuff is still payable in coins.
There used to be a shop at the local (alternative) Tollwood festival that sold pendants made from sawed-out coins from all around the world. But 20 bucks for one chain was a bit too high for me. Although considering that I never got around to getting out a metal fine saw and doing it myself, maybe I should get one…
Because it’s your money. If you want to give it away by dropping it into a charity collection box, fine. But if an employee withholds it from you, he is stealing from you (and possibly from his employer also by taking from the till or not logging the transaction).
That’s an entirely different question. And pennies can be used for more things than just vending machines.*
Spoiler: in one detective novel, an American student was earning a bit of side money by going to the bank and exchanging dollar bills for rolled coins. At home, he took them apart and compared date and place of minting with a collectors book to find the few coins that were worth more than their face value. These he sold to coin collectors shops. From the proceeds, he bought new rolls of pennies and coins…
True, he had enough spare time and presumably already liked coins, but still - it would work.
I don’t care if people demand their one penny in change (in the current system).
I was talking about the argument that always comes up that if the rounding up and down is left up to the shops in a world without pennies, they’ll try to ‘cheat’ you by rounding up more often than down.
Sure, they’re useful for putting in giant jars at home so they can eventually be dragged to the bank or coinstar and converted to actual money.
Such as? Not the random 1912 collectible penny, but the everyday 2009 penny penny. What can you buy with just pennies (that won’t make the store clerk want to/actually punch you)?
Nothing, that’s what. Pennies are useless. We all have to carry them around to prevent people from burdening us with even more of the damn things and then, when we’re unsuccessful, we have to store them until we have enough to make it worth lugging them somewhere to exchange for actual spendable money.
If only a few shops do that, on their own, than yes, this is a possibility (though I don’t think anybody in this thread said that).
If the government did away with the pennies and mandated a rounding scheme, like in other countries, then it would even out.
First, I don’t understand why you are not allowed to deposit your pennies at your bank and have to use coinstar for a fee instead. It’s legal currency, the bank is charged with handling it, how can they refuse?
Secondly, why are you so stupid to put it into jars in the first place? Nobody does that here (in Germany). Instead, we keep a few pennies in our purse, and then when we have to pay 4.27, we can count out 7 single pennies and a 20 cent piece, and so the pennies are used and kept from accumulating.
“Legal tender” doesn’t create an obligation on anyone’s part. Banks are free to decide that it’s not worth the cost in labour-hours to have their employees count pennies.
Because it isn’t worth our time to keep track of pennies and count them out to make exact change.
So if you cash out your entire net worth and have it paid in pennies, you would scorn them all? I’ll take those pennies off your hands. In neatly boxed sets of rolls if you please.
That sounds like worse inflation overall, in the specific context of restaurants, than we’ve experienced here. It raises some interesting points I would bring up, except they’re really outside the scope of this thread.
Actually, that’s what “legal tender” does mean in Germany - people are required to accept it. A company can choose whether or not to accept a debt paid in sheep, but if the customer offers legal cash (of that country), the company is required to take it.
And our High Court (BGH) issued a ruling several years back that the business of banks is dealing with money, and regardless of the cost of employees involved, charging customers a fee for either paying into or out of their own account with cash was not allowed.
Oh, you must have a different definition of time, then, considering that a significant part of Americans pays with cheques at the supermarket, which have to be filled out. Seriously, how long does it take you to fish out one 20 cent and a few pennies to make 27 cents??