It works in Austrailia where they got rid of the Penny. They round to the nearest 5 cent.
[Del]You think it’s annoying? Try counterfeiting it. You have no idea how much of a pain in the as[/Del]
Damn straight it’s annoying.
You know since they changed pennies to mostly zinc, you can melt them on a stovetop. Try it some time.
It will probably be a couple of years before I see one of these things close up, but to me the new design looks like a bus token; and the prominent initials on either side look like ® and © symbols at first glance.
ETA: huh, that didn’t come out. But you know what I mean: the little “r” and the little “c” with circles around them.
I like that it has our true and much better motto: E PLURIBUS UNUM. Now if they’d just get rid of the lame ‘In god We Trust’ it will truly be modern.
® (alt+0174) © (alt+0169)?
That’s exactly what some people said in 1959. I wonder what opposition there was in 1909, when Lincoln became the first actual individual to appear on a U.S. coin, rather than someone who was merely symbolic.
I guess some people just don’t like change.
According to the U.S. Mint, the new penny was put into circulation on February 11- the day before Lincoln’s birthday.
Hey! He was just giving his 2 cents.
I will be more than happy to trade you any of my stuningly beautiful bright shiny pennies straight up for any of your disgusting looking $5 bills.
Agreed. I mean, it’s nice that the new penny is bigger, so you can see all that detail, but I’d kind of like that benefit to accrue to the image of the Lincoln Memorial.
I got no indication that they increased the size of the coin.
I learned a new word, “obverse”, so I now have something new to smugly insert into my general vocabulary and entertain myself while irritating others. That’s worth every penny.
My wife, the first grade teacher, groans whenever she hears that they’re changing the design of the currency again. For example she has to teach 5 year olds what a nickel is, and how much it is worth, based on pictures of what it looks like, and now those pictures are all out of date. When a coin has several variants, many of which aren’t in the textbooks, the kids get utterly confused.
Then it’s time for her to teach them that not all nickels are identical . . . just like people.
Looks a little cartoony, but maybe that’s just the style of the illustration. I think the Lincoln Memorial engraving is lovely – esp. since I discovered that you can in fact see a tiny sliver of Lincoln’s head between the columns.
–Cliffy
Well played! 
Well, that’s why they never change the size or thickness of the coins – and why the dime is still smaller than the nickel and the penny even though it’s no longer made of silver. That’s something interesting she can teach them about!
Not until they get over the egregious practice of not adding on the sales tax until you are at the checkout.
Which can really only happen if sales tax gets generalized.
Well, Washington did appear on several tokens between 1783-1795. Of course, those were not minted under the authority of the United States, so I guess they don’t count.
The US Mint issued coins with Columbus, Isabella, Washington, Lafayette, Jefferson, McKinley, Lewis and Clark before Lincoln appeared on any coin.