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This is all a bit hyperbolic. Stopping minting pennies made sense and has precedent. There used to be half penny coins. Also, pennies are still legal tender. F
by JCM9 10mo ago
This is all a bit hyperbolic. Stopping minting pennies made sense and has precedent. There used to be half penny coins.
Also, pennies are still legal tender. Folks can take them to a bank or other venue and cash them in. They’re not “trash.”
- DerekL 10mo ago*precedent
- JCM9 10mo agoThanks and fixed. Darn autocorrect.
- jldugger 10mo ago> Folks can take them to a bank FWIW my bank refuses to accept unrolled coins, long before this month's retirement of the penny.
- bigfishrunning 10mo agoSo roll them?
- jldugger 10mo agoI have like 2 dollars in coins, not even a roll of pennies. I just thought I'd try depositing it while running a different bank errand and they were like "naw, go to coinstar with your poor person money"
- tocs3 10mo agoI have talked to my bank and was told not to roll them, they just throw them in a machine to count them and deposit the money in my count. It is not uncommon to see people bring in a box of coins and the bank takes care of them.
- leoh 10mo agoIs that legal?
- CGamesPlay 10mo agoIt seems more reasonable than the outright refusal of many businesses to accept cash at all, and plus this transaction isn't even a "debt" to which the penny would be legal tender.
- analog31 10mo agoAs I understand it, more than X dollars worth of coins is not legal tender. I learned this due to an absurd case in Detroit, where someone stole bags of coins from an armored car, got caught, and claimed their crime was not a felony because it was below the dollar limit for a felony. Of course the judge treated their request with the disdain that it deserved.
- xethos 10mo agoThere are multiple laws that could have been broken to make it a felony, but if the only reason it would have been a felony was the dollar amount, I'm actually less inclined to side with the judge. This is all third-hand, through a game of internet-telephone, and my money (if you'll pardon the pun) is on there being additional factors though
- analog31 10mo agoOne of the reasons why I changed banks. My new bank has a coin counting machine in the lobby, you throw your coins in, it consumes them, and gives you a slip that you take to the teller. As I understand it, coins are considered a government service. Banks and retailers pay to deal with them. Buying them from the public for face value actually saves them money.
- ghssds 10mo agoIt's so easy to use coins, pennies included, in day-to-day transactions I never accumulate any. Accumulating pennies or other coins is a concept I don't understand. You can spend up to 4 pennies in any purchase you do, and if you don't can't never receive more than 4. For nickels, dimes, and quarters, the maximum is smaller.
- analog31 10mo agoObligatory Dr. Strangelove reference: *You don't think I'd go into combat with loose change in my pocket, do you?" But I must admit that I never formed the habit of bringing change with me when I go somewhere. So it piled up at home. The quarters were easy: They got saved for parking, laundry, etc. But I ended up with a sack of pennies that I finally cashed in at the bank.
- tonyedgecombe 10mo agoMost of our supermarkets have at least one self service machine that accepts change. Once a week I pour any loose change in then settle the rest with a card.
- stevekemp 10mo agoI guess this might depend where you are. When I lived in Scotland there was a "loose change" machine at the local Tesco. You pour in your coins and it would give you a receipt you could take to a cashier to get cash back - but the downside was that it charged you something like 10% of the total as a fee. Which I wouldn't pay. Edit: I just searched and the Tesco documentation says "There is a 25p transaction fee and an 11.5% processing fee on the total amount of coins you put in the Coinstar centre. For charity donations, this processing fee is reduced to 8.9%." (wow, how generous!)
- JCM9 10mo agoA lot of banks just have one of those coin counting machine things (like Coinstar but not Coinstar). Coinstar also often has zero commission options like gift cards that are an easy way to cash in extra change without paying fees.
- c22 10mo agoIf you're feeding it pennies you can also just give it one penny at a time to avoid the fees.
- Cerium 10mo agoAverage gift card has a discount of 8 to 20% built in. Looks like Coinstar is currently charging 12.9%, so a gift card could actually be more profitable for them.
- mrguyorama 10mo agoA credit union local to me waives the fee if you are a member.
- schlauerfox 10mo agoMine had the machines, then ripped them out, over the cost to them the regional bank they deal with imposed and other excuses. Coinstar (some) gift card is the only no-fee I've found in my area, but then you're stuck with a gift card instead of cash.
- pengaru 10mo agoIt's odd how banks have largely stopped operating change counting machines. In my childhood we'd hoard loose change then make a trip to the local po-dunk bank serving my neighborhood surrounded by corn fields, and even there they'd take our bucket of loose change and dump it into a counting machine for free. It was a game to try guess the amount we'd get in paper cash... Now you have to pay for this service at a grocery store using a cumbersome machine operated by Coinstar.
- zdragnar 10mo agoCOVID happened. However, all three of the banks I visit regularly (over branch of a national bank, two branches of a local credit union) all have coin counting machines in the lobby, though it took awhile for them to be added back to the branches that took theirs out.
- pengaru 10mo agoNo doubt COVID kicked skimpflation into high gear, but this was already a pattern I noticed long before 2019. It seemed to generally coincide with the demise of retail in general, and of course the elimination of bank-teller interactions and emergence of ATM machines. All of these things are a blurry mess from my past...
- sowbug 10mo agoFun fact: modern dimes, quarters, and half-dollars all have the same value by weight -- about $20 per pound.
- addaon 10mo agoThis is true by design (silver coins had a weight chosen by value of silver), not coincidence. Also while nickels and pennies don’t match.
- citrin_ru 10mo agoCoin counting machines exist for decades (and I hope still produced), why not all banks have them?
- spelk 10mo agoIn Canada, I've only ever seen these in grocery stores, operating for a fee (and they don't accept commissions) and a singular credit union branch (because they serve the underbanked at that particular location).
- nancyminusone 10mo agoMy bank used to have one, but it merged with another bank and the machine got taken away "to serve a larger branch"
- csdreamer7 10mo ago> FWIW my bank refuses to accept unrolled coins, long before this month's retirement of the penny. My (edit: old) bank refused to accept unrolled coins back in the early 2000s.
- spott 10mo agoI think when the half penny was discontinued it had the same buying power as the dime does now or something like that. So this is long overdue.
- brnt 10mo ago> They’re not “trash.” I live in the Eurozone. We had 1 and 2 cent coins for a while. Where I live these were quickly deprecated and I think in most other Eurozone countries too by now. I have thrown any of these coins straight in the bin soon as somebody gave them. Too much hassle and requires too big a wallet to drag along, for literally pennies. When I first realized dealing with coins was inversely proportional to their denomination I threw out less than a Euros worth. I do not understand anyone who doesn't throw out their pennies.
- throwawayffffas 10mo agoI stored some 1 and 2 cent coins in 2005 betting they will become collectible in a few decades.
- brnt 10mo agoThere are many things that will become collectibles. I don't want to spend the energy and time storing various items on the chance they might become valuable.
- mint5 10mo agoThrowing out cent coins doesn’t seem like an environmental waste to you, like throwing out aluminum cans? Yes they’re impractical to carry and use but does anyone actually do that? Why not do the standard practice of accumulate them in a jar instead of throwing them in the trash like waste? it’s easy to take them home and throw them in a jar until suddenly the jar is a Kg of metal that can be fed to whatever coinstar like machine is around.
- brnt 10mo agoMetals are separated here, but compared to all the other waste I generate, I'd say it's... pennies on the dollar. Storing and collecting things is by itself an expense too: space, energy (you probably store them in a controlled environment), and so on.
- Symbiote 10mo ago