What to do with small change?

[Nik]

Coins is something we have preserved from the previous millennia.
I'm not even sure it's economical to produce coins of small denomination and they are being reduced and taken out of circulation.
But even bigger coins are becoming redundant and useless with their weight and low buying power. You can't really come with a bag of coins anywhere.
Their best usage seems to be as piggy bank fillers and street art encouragement.
Do you think the metal coins are an unnecessary anachronism or not quite?

[J.J.]

Smaller denominations are no longer profitable to mint. There are numbers thrown out that our 5 cent piece contains 7cents of metal. Last I checked, the metal value of our zinc penny is 2/3cent. Our dollar has lost so much value through inflation in the last seventy years or so, it would be wise to consider eliminating them.

On the other hand, there are numbers out there that show a dollar coin would cost the government less than the paper dollar. While the paper dollar is cheaper to print, the life expectancy of the coin recoups the extra cost given how many times a paper dollar has to be replaced in that same period. Americans tend to complain about how clunky their pockets will feel with all those dollars converted to coins, but I have to say when I visited Canada, I didn't see a problem. If anything, it forced me to spend my change instead of constantly breaking larger bills I didn't need to break.

[Scout]

Well, when I accumulate enough coins, I use a machine that gives me cash for a 10% cost just to get rid of them. I'm losing money.

[Nik]

Scout wrote: "Well, when I accumulate enough coins, I use a machine that gives me cash for a 10% cost just to get rid of them. I'm losing money."

I brought a few times to supermarket counted and marked small bags. They are usually happy to take a small change and provide banknotes, as they need a constant refill.

[Ian]

In my case, I go buy something. Or feed parking meters - they are voracious accumulators of coins.

[Scout]

Coins are so heavy to carry around, and I'd be happy to get rid of them entirely, but our pricing here in the U.S. is based on the 99 cent rule, which is outdated but maybe effective. Advertisers count on people seeing the price of $13.99 as more enticing than a price of $14.00.

[Philip]

Contact less debit cards and phone apps are killing cash very quickly in London. My son almost never carries cash. I keep coins only for parking meters, Small denominations given in change the equivalent 1 cent discussed above get dropped into charity.

We have £1 and £2 coins instead of notes as well as the smaller denominations. The pound note went years ago. The £1 coin is the same size (not far off value) as the 1 Euro coin. Was this convenience, part of the EU attempts to homogenise our societies, or the UK's original plan to join the Euro - take your pick.

[Nik]

Coins - they are around for thousands of years, however the feeling is that their days are numbered. Banknotes may hold on for a while, but - coins? Not sure, they'll be around beyond 10-30 years. What do you think?

[J.J.]

There's probably a very powerful lobby making sure enough senators oppose discontinuation...like how one paper lobby is the reason the US hasn't discontinued the paper dollar and forced us to switch to the dollar coin...

[Nik]

Lobbies vs progress? I can imagine retrogrades containing novelties until they are fully ready to control them. And who ever allowed switching steam to combustion? -:)

[Holly]

I put all my pennies in a glass quart jar. When the jar is filled it makes an excellent bookend.

I have some friends who tiled their bathroom floor with shiny new pennies, with a clear coat on top. It looks wonderful.

[Ian]

Eventually that bathroom will be demolished and the tiled floor will go to some dump, and in some future time archaeologists will dig up said dump. This could lead to a theory that overturns the then current one of what pennies were really for :-)

[Nik]

Add to this bathrooms in Russia decorated with worthless rubles and privatization certificates and future generations will understand exactly what our monetary system is worth -:)