# What independently-useful items can still be bought for a penny?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-independently-useful-items-can-still-be-bought-for-a-penny/693776>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [July 22, 2014, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-independently-useful-items-can-still-be-bought-for-a-penny/693776 "2014-07-22T21:25:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\
**Post date:** [July 25, 2014, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-independently-useful-items-can-still-be-bought-for-a-penny/693776/21 "2014-07-25T19:57:08Z")

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> [@MrsTime](#):
>
> Canada no longer even has a penny. Pricing still uses cents but the pennies are rounded up or down .

Quite a number of countries, no longer have any fractional currency at all. The basic monetary unit is the lowest level of rounding, and even though they are officially on the decimal system, there is no coin smaller than the statutory unit – peso, yen, franc, whatever.

In the USA, before WWII, when the penny-cent was the smallest coin in circulation, it had the purchasing power now enjoyed by about 20 cents. So the US could abolish the pennies, nickels and dimes, and round everything to the nearest quarter, and introduce coins for $1, $5, $10 and the utility of pocket change would mirror that of 75 years ago.

WalMart already rounds everything off to the nearest dollar, expressed as X.88.

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**Author:** ![MrsTime](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@MrsTime](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrsTime)\
**Post date:** [July 25, 2014, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-independently-useful-items-can-still-be-bought-for-a-penny/693776/22 "2014-07-25T20:56:28Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> introduce coins for $1, $5, $10

We do have the looney and the tooney…the one and 2 dollar coins. They are ever so useful especially since we like to yard sale.

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**Author:** ![John\_Bredin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@John\_Bredin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Bredin)\
**Post date:** [July 25, 2014, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-independently-useful-items-can-still-be-bought-for-a-penny/693776/23 "2014-07-25T23:45:43Z")

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> [@filmore](#):
>
> I had a gumball recently and it was horrible! Tough, flavorless wax. I remember those penny gumballs as actually being pretty good.

As I recall, they sell rubber “superballs” from the same kind of machines as gumballs. Are you sure you didn’t make a mistake? :eek:😃

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**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\
**Post date:** [July 26, 2014, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-independently-useful-items-can-still-be-bought-for-a-penny/693776/24 "2014-07-26T00:04:42Z")

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> [@Octarine](#):
>
> Amazon has a whole page for [one cent items](http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000935261). Most of them have been marked down by almost 100% from much higher prices. In reality, they wouldn’t actually cost a penny once you add in shipping.

“One cent” prices on Amazon are sellers cheating to get their items noticed. The real price is the “shipping,” which I would expect to be a flat per-item fee for a one cent item. (If it was really a shipping fee, it wouldn’t cost 2x to ship two unless it was something extremely large or heavy.)

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