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The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

(www.cnn.com)
334 points andrewl | 36 comments | 12 Nov 25 16:10 UTC | HN request time: 0.204s | source | bottom
1. Analemma_ ◴[12 Nov 25 16:23 UTC] No.45902070[source]▶
Honestly nickels and dimes, and maybe even quarters, should go too. It's ridiculous that we don't have $1 and $2 coins in widespread circulation in the US (we have a $1 coin but nobody uses it).
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2. JohnFen ◴[12 Nov 25 16:31 UTC] No.45902164[source]▶
I'd mourn the loss of the quarter. I use those quite often.

> (we have a $1 coin but nobody uses it)

Because they keep designing it in the stupidest way, making it easy to confuse with a quarter. I don't know why they do that.

That said, I do prefer paper $1 bills over coins. Paper is lighter and easier to carry. But I'd only slightly grumble if we replaced it with a reasonable coin.

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3. terminalshort ◴[12 Nov 25 16:35 UTC] No.45902208[source]▶
It's a completely different color than a quarter.
replies(2): >>45902264 #>>45902437 #
4. basscomm ◴[12 Nov 25 16:36 UTC] No.45902226[source]▶
We also have a $2 bill that nobody uses for whatever reason.

I never understood the objections to the $1 coin, especially after the redesign to make it more distinct from a quarter. $1 coins are great for buying stuff out of vending machines since you don't have to fight with a dodgy bill acceptor or a mangled bill.

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5. JohnFen ◴[12 Nov 25 16:39 UTC] No.45902264{3}[source]▶
That doesn't help if you're in dim lighting or have vision problems.
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6. nicole_express ◴[12 Nov 25 16:42 UTC] No.45902303[source]▶
Honestly I'd rather just not have coins at that point, rather than try to push $1 and $2 coins. Then I can just carry my wallet for bills and not have to worry about keeping track of coins separately.

Gotta do something to make the $2 bill popular though, no idea how.

7. Brendinooo ◴[12 Nov 25 16:44 UTC] No.45902335[source]▶
Nickels and dimes certainly have predecent. When the US killed the half-penny in 1857, it had a purchasing power of somewhere around 19 cents from 2024.
8. 45764986 ◴[12 Nov 25 16:45 UTC] No.45902354{4}[source]▶
If you have vision problems, US currency is totally unfriendly to you. Unlike other countries, which have bills of different sizes, all the US currency bills are the same size, so getting change as a blind person is basically relying on the honesty of whoever is behind the counter.
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9. delecti ◴[12 Nov 25 16:48 UTC] No.45902394[source]▶
Quarters might be premature, but the half-cent was discontinued when it was worth a (modern equivalent) of $0.12-17. Even 20-30 years ago, when I was just starting to interact with money enough to have an opinion, I thought it was a hassle to deal with anything smaller than a quarter. The same logic behind getting rid of pennies (they cost more to make than the face value) also supports doing at least nickels.
replies(1): >>45902562 #
10. devmor ◴[12 Nov 25 16:49 UTC] No.45902405[source]▶
> We also have a $2 bill that nobody uses for whatever reason.

It’s because retailers wont accept them - they think they’re counterfeit because no one uses them. A catch-22 situation, really.

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11. JohnFen ◴[12 Nov 25 16:49 UTC] No.45902408{5}[source]▶
Absolutely true. It's one of the several crazy design problems with US paper currency.
12. terminalshort ◴[12 Nov 25 16:49 UTC] No.45902409{4}[source]▶
That would explain why 1% of people don't use the $1 coin. It doesn't explain the other 99%.
replies(1): >>45902444 #
13. pavel_lishin ◴[12 Nov 25 16:51 UTC] No.45902437{3}[source]▶
If your fingertips can sense the color of things in your pocket, I'd love to learn more.
14. orangecat ◴[12 Nov 25 16:52 UTC] No.45902443[source]▶
Yeah. My proposal would be to have 10 cent, 50 cent, and $1 coins (rounding everything to the nearest 10 cents), with $2 the smallest bill. And probably you could drop the $5 bill at that point.
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15. pavel_lishin ◴[12 Nov 25 16:52 UTC] No.45902444{5}[source]▶
99% of people have Darkvision? What is this, a D&D party?
16. JohnFen ◴[12 Nov 25 16:52 UTC] No.45902455{3}[source]▶
I've never had a retailer refuse to accept a $2 bill, although a couple of times the clerk summoned the manager about it.

But I've never found a retailer willing to give a $2 bill as change.

The resistance to the $2 bill is a very weird cultural thing.

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17. JohnFen ◴[12 Nov 25 16:59 UTC] No.45902562[source]▶
> The same logic behind getting rid of pennies (they cost more to make than the face value)

I've honestly never understood why this is a valid reason to object to the coin. Coins aren't used only once, so that they cost most to make than their face value doesn't seem very important, unless the differential is much, much larger than it actually is.

18. ianferrel ◴[12 Nov 25 17:02 UTC] No.45902607{3}[source]▶
There's a lot of physical infrastructure that works with quarters, and it's probably not worth giving that up for slightly improved coinage. Just drop all the coins smaller than a quarter.
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19. mkehrt ◴[12 Nov 25 17:09 UTC] No.45902682[source]▶
Sorry Europe and Canada, $1 and $2 coins are just absolutely terrible. I never want to have to think about where my change is. Bills are much lighter than coins and stack with the rest of the bills.
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20. basscomm ◴[12 Nov 25 17:11 UTC] No.45902707[source]▶
> That said, I do prefer paper $1 bills over coins. Paper is lighter and easier to carry.

Sure, but how many $1 bills do you typically carry around? If it's more than four, then you can trade them in for a $5 bill just about anywhere.

21. basscomm ◴[12 Nov 25 17:13 UTC] No.45902736{4}[source]▶
That's why the dollar coin was redesigned in 2000. The old dollar coin had a reeded edge that was too similar to a quarter, so it was sometimes hard to distinguish if you had vision issues (or if you didn't have vision issues because they were about the same size as a quarter). The new ones have a smooth edge so you can tell them apart from quarters without having to look at them
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22. basscomm ◴[12 Nov 25 17:42 UTC] No.45903143{4}[source]▶
That only works if you completely reconfigure sales tax
23. JohnFen ◴[12 Nov 25 17:44 UTC] No.45903164{5}[source]▶
True, and the new design is better than the old because of it. But it hasn't resolved the issue enough to really matter. Some less subtle physical difference is required -- put a hole in it, make it an obviously unique size, whatever.

At least that's how it seems to me. It's an interesting design issue. I don't personally care too much -- I'm fine with the paper bill -- but I do have curiosity about why the coin designers have made the decisions they did about the $1 coin.

24. silisili ◴[12 Nov 25 17:51 UTC] No.45903280[source]▶
My only real objection I guess, and the reason I don't carry change of any sort, is because it's constantly falling out of my pockets. I'm rather tall, so many seating positions put my knees higher than my waist, which I think contributes to that.

Further, since I don't have enough pockets to have a dedicated change pocket, it's always getting caught up in my keys and/or pocket knife.

Nobody really gave us training on this stuff, do other countries use a coin purse or some such?

Lastly, they're just comparatively heavy.

I just carry cash around in either a clip or a "front pocket wallet" I think they're called, and it seems more convenient all around.

replies(1): >>45905099 #
25. ecshafer ◴[12 Nov 25 17:58 UTC] No.45903386[source]▶
I want to get rid of bills and move to only coins. We can carry coin pouches and act like a medieval/fantasy novel character.
replies(1): >>45904255 #
26. CGMthrowaway ◴[12 Nov 25 18:07 UTC] No.45903511[source]▶
Used to use dollar coins at toll booths all the time. That was before ez pass
27. panzagl ◴[12 Nov 25 18:07 UTC] No.45903514[source]▶
Bring back the Eisenhower dollar!
28. BenoitEssiambre ◴[12 Nov 25 18:12 UTC] No.45903582[source]▶
At least nickels should go so we can always round by one digit.
29. balamatom ◴[12 Nov 25 18:51 UTC] No.45904255{3}[source]▶
IMO best would be some kind of money where you could physically break a given piece of cash into two pieces of half the value.
30. orangecat ◴[12 Nov 25 18:58 UTC] No.45904387{4}[source]▶
There's a lot of physical infrastructure that works with quarters

Very good point and I think I'm convinced.

31. ewoodrich ◴[12 Nov 25 19:28 UTC] No.45905012{4}[source]▶
Dispensaries in OR/WA love $2 bills, for some chains they're as unremarkable as a $1 and must special request them in bulk to keep on hand for making change.
32. basscomm ◴[12 Nov 25 19:33 UTC] No.45905099{3}[source]▶
> Nobody really gave us training on this stuff, do other countries use a coin purse or some such?

Americans also use coin purses or rubber coin pouches, but I mostly only see older generations using them.

33. emodendroket ◴[12 Nov 25 19:53 UTC] No.45905458[source]▶
When I was in Japan everything was all-cash and the smallest bill was the equivalent of a $10, with equivalents to $1 and $5 coins being in common circulation. Most wallets they sold/people had had a coin pocket to account for this.
34. toast0 ◴[12 Nov 25 20:24 UTC] No.45906008{4}[source]▶
There's also the 3rd amendment. It would be worthless to say soldiers can't demand change for the vending machine, when nobody at all can get quarters.
35. acheron ◴[12 Nov 25 20:26 UTC] No.45906034[source]▶
This was a whole thing in the 70s. There was a 3 step plan:

1) Bring back the $2 bill (it had not been printed for a decade+)

2) Redesign the $1 coin (Eisenhowers being too big and heavy)

3) Stop printing $1 bills

Unfortunately they never got to step 3, which made 1 and 2 pointless, and here we are.

36. toast0 ◴[12 Nov 25 20:27 UTC] No.45906065{4}[source]▶
> But I've never found a retailer willing to give a $2 bill as change.

Mostly retailers don't stock $2 bills (because they're weird), so if a customer brings a $2, the cashier will put it in their their exceptional bills area, which usually is just large bills. No change is made with exceptional bills, so twos don't get recirculated.