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The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

(www.cnn.com)
460 points andrewl | 1 comments | 12 Nov 25 16:10 UTC | HN request time: 0.236s | source
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hrimfaxi ◴[12 Nov 25 16:17 UTC] No.45901988[source]▶
I watched a video on the demise of the penny and its predicament was so succinctly explained: everyone gets pennies as change but few carry them around let alone spend them, so we are stuck producing ever more. One news outlet even did an "experiment" where they threw hundreds of pennies on the ground in a city on a busy morning and not one person stopped to pick any up.
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basscomm ◴[12 Nov 25 16:31 UTC] No.45902153[source]▶
> everyone gets pennies as change but few carry them around let alone spend them

It's not just pennies, it's all coins. In a former life I worked in retail and almost nobody would fish around in their pockets for exact (or even near) change. They'd always hand me bills for their purchase even if they had just completed a transaction and had the coins in their pocket. That was in the 90's, and I still see it happening today, even though I'm no longer in the retail world.

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1. zahlman ◴[12 Nov 25 20:08 UTC] No.45905726[source]▶
I pay exact change whenever I can.

And on the occasions where I can only make (exact change + simple amount), I often get deer-in-headlights looks from cashiers who can't do mental arithmetic and apparently haven't learned how to get the machine to understand payments of more than one physical bill or coin.