Couldn’t they divert their energies and zinc, precious ziiiinc into making $0.99 coins, which still represent most electrical goods sale prices?
Currently, yes, but once upon a time the yen was divided into the 1/100 sen and 1/1000 rin.
The New Currency Act of 1871 stipulated the adoption of the decimal accounting system of yen (1, 圓), sen (1⁄100, 錢), and rin (1⁄1000, 厘), with the coins being round and manufactured using Western machinery. The yen was legally defined as 0.78 troy ounces (24.26 g) of pure silver, or 1.5 grams of pure gold (as recommended by the European Congress of Economists in Paris in 1867; the 5-yen coin was equivalent to the Argentine 5 peso fuerte coin[16]), hence putting it on a bimetallic standard.
After WWII the yen was devalued to 360 per dollar until it started to float in 1971. When I was on Okinawa forty-five years ago, 1-yen coins were in circulation. They were about the size of a nickle but thicker, and made of aluminum.
For some kinds of forward planning and budgeting, project estimates are rounded to the nearest thousand dollars. Until the project has a design, the estimate really can’t be more exact than that.
Some grant applications don’t even want you filling in the zeros. You fill in estimates for different parts of the project in a column titled: COST ($1,000s).
When filling in Australian tax returns, the numbers are all rounded down to the dollar, I.e., any cents are truncated.
I think you do the same thing when doing your tax return in the United States.
No they’re rounded but to the nearest dollar not truncated.
Yes, here - or at least, sentimental reminiscence of its rather pretty design - the wren, our smallest bird.
As well as farthings - the Brits at one time had fractional farthings: 1/4, 1/3, and 1/2. e.g.: GB & Ireland – Quarter-Farthings | The Old Currency Exchange is a specialist dealer and valuer of Irish & GB coins, tokens and banknotes
Aren’t stocks still sold at some irregular interval, like a third or a sixth of a cent? Rounded up, but a lot of purchasers do seem to buy in bulk…
1/8 of a dollar or 12-1/2 cents.
Sorry! I should have said “Commonwealth countries take the lead…” Never mind; I’m almost entirely accustomed to the USA being dead last in so many areas.
Stocks haven’t been sold for fractional dollars for 20 years.
Penny candy. 5¢ candy bars. 12¢ comic books and snack cakes…
10¢ comic books. They didn’t rise to 12¢ until 1962.
I remember happily noting a foreign country I was visiting (Guatemala maybe?) had only the equivalent of quarters as coins. Everything was rounded to quarter dollar values. I wish we’d adopt a similar system.
That may be true for the original Carolingian currency that started the £sd system, but I don’t think it has been true for centuries. The penny has been minted exclusively in copper since the 17th century. The shilling continued to be in silver until well into the 20th century, and the pound was defined in terms of gold content after 1816 (and physically coined as such, in the form of the sovereign). So it was the pound and the shilling that were made of precious metal, not the penny, at a time when it was that metal that gave currencies their value. Under such circumstances I don’t find it convincing to say that the pound and the shilling are mere multiples of pence.
Funny enough, right now while the CT frothers are in full froth about so many other things (thanks QAnon), this would be the ideal time for the US to kill every coin smaller than the 25¢. Mandate rounding the total on all cash transactions and it’d be done. Hell round to the nearest dollar ($1 minimum) and be done with stupid coins altogether.
The US public is like a 5yo scared to slowly peel off the band-aid because it might hurt. Mom needs to just grab that sucker & pull.
Indeed. People will act like it’s the collapse of Western Civilization, CTers will definitely hop in with some nonsense on this topic, Trump and his army of dipshits will find a way to paint this as “un-American,” and some liberal plot to turn us into godless Commies, or something, you know Soros is gonna get shoehorned into this, others will complain that this will just cause every business to round up their prices and make things more expensive (probably some slight truth to that), etc.
Knowing the American public, I can’t see any way of this happening without it being a total (mostly manufactured) shitshow.
Until you introduce dollar and two dollar coins, of course. 
Up until about a decade ago, I used to love coins. Part of what I loved traveling around, especially pre-Euro, was the variety of coins I’d collect and some of their odder shapes (they’re not all round and some have an inset that is a different color than the outer diameter). The UK was particularly cool, because the pound wasn’t particularly big, but it was thick – it had some heft to it and would really hurt if you Nolan Ryaned it into somebody’s skull. But, better yet, it had value. I could actually buy something with that coin. Sometimes even two things.
Now, screw it. I held on to the idea of coins because of vending machines, and I hated the ones that accepted bills and you’d have to play “take it, no you take it, no, I insist, you have it!, no really, I don’t want it, just keep it!” with because your dollar bill was left folded in your wallet for one microsecond too long and rendered no longer readable by the bill reader. But now we have modern tech, and many vending machines (and now even tire air machines!) have credit card readers.
So off with the coins! Leave behind the quarter, if you must, but we need to get rid of all this change. I’ve literally thrown pennies and nickels into the garbage because I didn’t feel like plucking them out of my pocket detritus and finding the coin jar.