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The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

(www.cnn.com)
334 points andrewl | 2 comments | 12 Nov 25 16:10 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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nayuki ◴[12 Nov 25 16:41 UTC] No.45902294[source]▶
We eliminated pennies in Canada in 2012 and the transition was a non-issue. The vast majority of retailers would round cash transactions to the nearest $0.05, but a few would round down to the nearest $0.05 in favor of the customer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_low-denomination...

Canadian cash is better than American cash in several ways: No penny, durable polymer banknotes (instead of dirty wrinkly cotton paper), colorful banknotes (instead of all green) that are easy to distinguish, $1 and $2 coins in wide circulation (instead of worn-out $1 bills).

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simonw ◴[12 Nov 25 16:42 UTC] No.45902306[source]▶
The linked article raises a few problems that the US could have with that solution:

> Four states - Delaware, Connecticut, Michigan and Oregon - as well as numerous cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Miami and Washington, DC, require merchants to provide exact change.

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skylurk ◴[12 Nov 25 16:58 UTC] No.45902542[source]▶
> require merchants to provide exact change

All the items in my dad's farm shop were priced so they came out to a round dollar amount after tax, and that was 40 years ago.

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tempodox ◴[12 Nov 25 17:37 UTC] No.45903082[source]▶
But less decent people can’t resist the dark pattern of using $x.99 prices everywhere.
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1. mulmen ◴[12 Nov 25 18:17 UTC] No.45903683{3}[source]▶
At big retailers the price tag code indicates what type of price it is. For example the last digits can mean:

0: full

9: sale

8: reduced

7: clearance (item will not restock)

I forget the exact system Sears used but we could tell at a glance if a deal was really “good”.

I’m curious if Sears and WalMart used different systems and if WalMart exploited knowledge of the Sears system to signal better prices to shoppers. Like a full WalMart price being .97 and clearance being .94.

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2. redwall_hp ◴[12 Nov 25 18:39 UTC] No.45904038[source]▶
That sounds close to the Sears system to me, but they used the tens place. 8x was used for returned big ticket items, like appliances and treadmills. It would start at 88 and the rightmost digit would decrement to indicate how many weeks it had been sitting there.

It was 00 for full, 99 for sale (the majority of items, except for the one week every year they established the full price for that product), 8x for clearance.