# Dollars and dimes **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [October 29, 2015, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056 "2015-10-29T04:00:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2015, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056/41 "2015-11-16T04:47:17Z")
From the _Americans Think the Strangest Things_ Department: If the penny is eliminated, businesses will price things at 18¢ or 23¢ and round up. The horror, the horror! Billion-dollar ripoffs are capitalism at its finest, but stay away from my pennies! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2015, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056/42 "2015-11-16T04:49:13Z")
When I was a kid, a comic book was 10¢, a candy bar was 5¢, and lots of candy was still 1¢. A paperback novel was typically 35¢. A first-class postage stamp was 3¢. (A postcard was 2¢.) The house that my father could barely unload for $50,000 in 1971 is now $1,640,000. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2015, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056/43 "2015-11-16T05:25:18Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > You may be misinformed. There was a push for greater acceptance of the Saggie, and it seemed that the public was playing along. The spoilsports were Walmart and various merchants. Apparently they prefer dollar bills because they are lighter. This. And, moreover, this is an economy in which even a single item of merchandise generally costs at least a dollar or two, so end consumers tend not to bother counting out exact change in pennies, nickels and dimes. Because of this, the flow of coins is mostly one way, ending up with the consumer, who now has to bear the cost of counting, packing and exchanging their pile of coins that mounts up over time. In the short term this seems to be the path of least resistance for the merchant, who believes that he or she is saving money by passing the cost of coin redemption to the customer. However, as a result of this policy, the retailer needs a constant flow of coins from the bank, because the average customer sure as hell isn’t going to bring in 60 quarters to buy a couple of combo meals at a burger chain. In a perfect system, a cash retailer would get all the coins needed from their own customers, free of delivery and handling charges, rather than from a constant stream of bank deliveries as happens today. While a perfect balance of denominations, sizes and weights would be impossible to attain, we could be doing a lot better than we are now. How much would overall costs associated with armored deliveries be reduced, if pennies and nickels were removed from the picture? It would have to be significant. In any real world currency, there will always be lowest value coins that merchants have to keep reordering from the bank. But what we have here is a system in which _all_ coins have to be continually reordered from the bank, because they circulate only in a very defective way. ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2015, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056/44 "2015-11-16T06:22:49Z")
> [@Common\_Tater](#): > > Agreed the smaller denominations of coins should be dropped as they are worse than useless, but $5 $10 and $20 coins make sense. I’m not at all persuaded that $50 or $100 notes should be considered “large” denominations at this point, they don’t buy very much these days. Try telling that to retail establishments. As I said earlier, a lot of places these days only grudgingly accept them. And some places these days even put **20s** underneath the cash drawer! It’s deeply ironic that cash is treated more and more suspiciously, and looked on as a danger, even as inflation continually renders it worth less and less. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2015, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056/45 "2015-11-16T06:53:58Z")
> [@eastcheap](#): > > I presume that would be the one simple measure that was adopted _ **everywhere else in the world?** _ 🙂 Everywhere, that is, except the sort of countries where they don’t mind paper denominations worth even far less than a dollar. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2015, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056/46 "2015-11-16T07:00:29Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > Try telling that to retail establishments. As I said earlier, a lot of places these days only grudgingly accept them. > > And some places these days even put **20s** underneath the cash drawer! It’s deeply ironic that cash is treated more and more suspiciously, and looked on as a danger, even as inflation continually renders it worth less and less. I sometimes think we’ll live to see the day when a cup of plain Joe at Starbucks will cost 10, convenience store clerks will STILL take nothing bigger than a twenty, and we'll still have pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, which will all cost more than their face value to mint, and have no other practical purpose other than to huckster us into buying things with prices that end in .95, or some other denomination of a coin off the even dollar. Because if the Gummint just went ahead and overhauled the whole thing, some states would simply secede while in many others social order would utterly break down. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2015, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056/47 "2015-11-16T07:12:51Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > That can’t be right. A quarter’s got to be worth far more than a post-WWII penny, although not nearly as much as thirteen of them. A OK, I see. I missed something and completely misunderstood the assertion. Never mind. ---
**Author:** ![eastcheap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8491ac/32.png) [@eastcheap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eastcheap)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2015, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056/48 "2015-11-16T12:28:40Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > Try telling that to retail establishments. As I said earlier, a lot of places these days only grudgingly accept them. The only thing a $100 bill is good for is cash back, and most retailers won’t even use them for that. I’d rather go out of my way to give cashback customers $100 bills, but that’s just me. > [@](#): > > And some places these days even put **20s** underneath the cash drawer! Sometimes you have to because the damn things really pile up. A retailer who doesn’t offer cash back has little use for them in the till either. > [@](#): > > It’s deeply ironic that cash is treated more and more suspiciously, and looked on as a danger, even as inflation continually renders it worth less and less. Americans haven’t coped well with inflation. Personally, I believe the economy would be a lot healthier had the dollar been revalued in the '80s, but just imagine the furore that would have caused. ---
**Author:** ![eastcheap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8491ac/32.png) [@eastcheap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eastcheap)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2015, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056/49 "2015-11-16T12:35:22Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > …the flow of coins is mostly one way, ending up with the consumer, who now has to bear the cost of counting, packing and exchanging their pile of coins that mounts up over time. I never have to do that. I’m one of those annoying people who contrives to push his change up to the nearest quarter. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2015, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056/50 "2015-11-16T16:36:48Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > Paper bills weren’t necessarily trusted in the east, either - it depended on the reputation of the bank issuing them. Some were only accepted in areas near the bank, some had wider circulation. In the 19th century, the New Orleans-based _Banque des citoyens de la Louisiane_ issued $10 notes that were widely accepted up and down the Mississippi Valley. > > The bank printed their notes in French and English, with a large “TEN” on one side and [“DIX”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie#/media/File:DixBankNote.jpg)"on the other; people said you could see the “DIX” before you could see the note. The notes became known as “dixies”, and steamboaters would talk about going down to “dixie land”. The songwriter Daniel Emmett picked up on it, and wrote “Dixie’s Land”, which was a huge hit. According to one theory, this is how “Dixieland” and “Dixie” became nicknames for the South. I dunno. My money’s still on it stemming from surveyor Jeremiah Dixon, who with Charles Mason delineated the Mason-Dixon Line. ---
**Author:** ![qazwart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/5fc32e/32.png) [@qazwart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qazwart)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2015, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056/51 "2015-11-16T16:59:47Z")
> [@eastcheap](#): > > The only thing a $100 bill is good for is cash back. Believe it or not, the $100 is the most common U.S. bill in circulation. If you live in a country where you put more faith in Monopoly money than your own currency, having $100 bills buried somewhere or hidden in cabinets may be the best investment you can have. It’s actually the reason why the European Union printed 500 Euro notes. They want people all over the world to accept the Euro as the default currency over the dollar. It was felt that $500 Euro notes would be way more convenient than a $100 bill. About 20 percent of all Euros in _circulation_ are €500 notes. There is talk to [ban](http://www.wsj.com/video/time-could-come-to-ban-500-euro-notes/60DDE3F5-AC95-4007-98E3-5C68B108BEDE.html) the 500 Euro notes since it is used to facilitate criminal transactions. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2015, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056/52 "2015-11-21T01:15:04Z")
> [@Peremensoe](#): > > No, it _gets_ used for unopened rolls, random oddments and paper clips, precisely because we don’t have five coins in wide everyday circulation. > > There’s also no need to keep coupons, checks, or $100 bills in the drawer, as none of these will typically be given in change. They go underneath the tray, or into a separate drop compartment. > > The ideal drawer configuration is thus, $50, $20, $10, $5, and $2 bills; and, $1, half, quarter, dime, and five-cent coins. Five and five. > > Just get rid of the two obsolete units. I disagree. While switching to dollar coins might make $2 popular enough to care about them, half dollars are just too rare. The $50 is less rare–and it’s rare enough that I’d probably say we should use $100, $20, $10, $5, $2, and just put $50s under the drawer. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2015, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056/53 "2015-11-21T06:42:58Z")
> [@Peremensoe](#): > > No, it _gets_ used for unopened rolls, random oddments and paper clips, precisely because we don’t have five coins in wide everyday circulation. I spy eight compartments for coins or random oddments in [this cash drawer](http://www.cashdrawer.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/IMG_0646.jpg)–enough for six kinds of coins plus coin rolls and paper clips each in their own compartment. And in any case, if the coins we used actually had meaningful values at today’s price levels, cashiers wouldn’t have to worry about storing so many unopened rolls of coins, because they’d be getting more of them through ordinary transactions, from their customers. Of course, I also see that it’s got Euros in it, which must be why we can’t have such cash drawers here. Still, don’t many cash drawers have ten compartments in two rows of five, in addition to the bill slots? IIRC I’ve certainly seen them. > [@](#): > > The ideal drawer configuration is thus, $50, $20, $10, $5, and $2 bills; and, $1, half, quarter, dime, and five-cent coins. Five and five. > > Just get rid of the two obsolete units. I’d eliminate the $2 bill, for the same reason we don’t need a 2c coin. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2015, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056/54 "2015-11-21T06:48:36Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > From the _Americans Think the Strangest Things_ Department: > If the penny is eliminated, businesses will price things at 18¢ or 23¢ and round up. The horror, the horror! 'Tis a horror indeed. I might want to buy one wingnut at the hardware store for 97c, only to find that the price had been rounded up to an even dollar. By the way, did I ever mention how I once ranted on Quora that a handful of American change is worth hardly more than a handful of wingnuts? Then I looked up galvanized wingnuts on Home Depot’s website and discovered how wrong I was. At eighty cents to a dollar each, I was being far to generous. A handful of wingnuts is worth far more than a handful of American change. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2015, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056/55 "2015-11-21T09:02:49Z")
> [@qazwart](#): > > There is talk to [ban](http://www.wsj.com/video/time-could-come-to-ban-500-euro-notes/60DDE3F5-AC95-4007-98E3-5C68B108BEDE.html) the 500 Euro notes since it is used to facilitate criminal transactions. That’s the reason they don’t make US $500 bills or anything larger. Personally, I think they should make a US $200 bill. It would be a new denomination since they’ve never made one before. > [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > 'Tis a horror indeed. I might want to buy one wingnut at the hardware store for 97c, only to find that the price had been rounded up to an even dollar. Actually, that would round down to $.95. A 98 cent wingnut would round up. ---
**Author:** ![eastcheap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8491ac/32.png) [@eastcheap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eastcheap)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2015, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056/56 "2015-11-21T13:23:01Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > The $50 is less rare–and it’s rare enough that I’d probably say we should use $100, $20, $10, $5, $2, and just put $50s under the drawer. Less rare than twos, I guess. I literally can’t remember the last time I saw a fifty. Even when I transfer mediumish amounts from one bank to another (something I prefer to do in cash to avoid EFT- and cashier’s check annoyances), they give me 100s and 20s. > [@dtilque](#): > > Actually, that would round down to $.95. A 98 cent wingnut would round up. A lot of Americans seem to be concerned that retailers would round up individual prices instead of rounding totals. My response is always: [ul]Retailers love $X.99 pricing. If anything, they’ll round those down before they round them up; and[/ul] [ul]So what? The poor bastard’s probably operating with razor-thin margins anyway. Why begrudge him a lousy four cents?[/ul] ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2015, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056/57 "2015-11-21T14:57:17Z")
The larger point should be that the rounding would be insignificant no matter how it’s done. As I’ve pointed out before, everyone has always accepted rounding to the nearest cent, going back long to when cents were worth much more than today’s nickels and dimes. Prices and expectations are more fluid than the rounding margin regardless. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2015, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056/58 "2015-11-21T15:05:08Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > I’d eliminate the $2 bill, for the same reason we don’t need a 2c coin. We don’t need a two-cent now, of course, but mathematically it would have been a good idea in earlier days. The $2 is the same interval between $1 and $5 that the $20 is between $10 and $50. As long as $1 and $50 are within the range of reasonable denominations to carry, the $2 and the $20 have equivalent mathematical utility. Presuming of course that carrying _fewer pieces_ of money is considered a consistent good. ---
**Author:** ![eastcheap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8491ac/32.png) [@eastcheap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eastcheap)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2015, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056/59 "2015-11-21T15:31:19Z")
> [@Peremensoe](#): > > We don’t need a two-cent now, of course, but mathematically it would have been a good idea in earlier days. Apparently, only between 1864 and 1872. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2015, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056/60 "2015-11-21T15:38:55Z")
> [@eastcheap](#): > > Apparently, only between 1864 and 1872. 😃 Alas, Americans have never been completely rational about money. But, notice what was done when a new currency was designed from scratch, in the modern era, for the Eurozone. The denominations are, 0.01, 0.02, 0.05, 0.10, 0.20, 0.50, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500; a consistent, mathematically sensible pattern, top to bottom. The eight smallest are all coins, which is where the eight-coin tray upthread comes from. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-and-dimes/736056.md?page=4)