money.cnn.com — "The U.S. Mint has implemented a law against melting down pennies and nickels which, at current metal prices, could be worth more as metal than as currency. The new regulations authorize a fine of up to $10,000, or imprisonment of up to five years, or both, against violators."
Dec 14, 2006 View in Crawl 4
veyronsenghDec 15, 2006
If we can't melt our own pennies, then a lot of people shouldn't even have theirs that they just waste on bulls**t.
dusingazDec 15, 2006
Mints can't make laws.
Closed AccountDec 15, 2006
Everyone here is missing one gigantic important point. This regulation wasn't passed because it's suddenly so expensive to make a penny, it's being passed because existing pennies have suddenly appreciated in value. If people were to attempt to take advantage of that appreciated value, the united states has no choice but to mint new coins to replace the coinage that is permanently removed from circulation. That coinage now costs much more to produce and the extra cost is passed on to us taxpayers (thus it is detrimental to us all).
cerebralDec 15, 2006
@asleepThere is something that you are not accounting for and that is that some of the weight of the penny is copper. So you would have to take that into consideration in all of your calculations.
mattjvwDec 15, 2006
God man, you can't get sarcasm even when he adds a /sarcasm tag?
Closed AccountDec 15, 2006
go f**k yourself... i'll melt a damn penny if i want to...
Closed AccountDec 15, 2006
Just change the penny from 1 cent to 2 cents.5 to a dime. 50 to a dollar.Personalyl I'd say get rid of the penny. Make the nickel out of zinc. (and shouldn't it not be called a nickel since it's not nickel anymore...)Oh, and bring back the gold standard :D
liquidcolaDec 15, 2006
This is why it's a GOOD thing to have the penny... It keeps inflation in check. The (privately owned) Federal reserve can print up all the paper money they want with nothing to back it and drive inflation through the roof. Having coinage with at least SOME base value (the actual metal) is very valuable. If it starts to cost you 3 cents worth of metal to make a one cent coin (even after you've switched to the cheapest metals you can get to make the coin) there is a serious problem. There was a time when you could buy a whole meal for a handful of change. A (mediocre) burrito and medium drink at a la salsa restaurant at LAX cost me 14 bucks yesterday. Sheesh.
scottykempfDec 15, 2006
Yeah, and you could buy a gallon of gas for .43 cents. It's called inflation. Prices go up over time, usually wages do also.
chapiumDec 19, 2006
I seriously hope noone is traveling with 100 nickels or 500 pennies.
tazunemonoSep 28, 2007
To all those who don't care about the penny - remember Superman III? The computer program that Gus Gorman created, which took the fractions of cents left over from financial transactions and interest compounding and transferred them to a dummy account, is actually a reasonable way to steal if security has been compromised. Most people do not manually balance their own books, and would thus not notice the missing penny. At large data centers for banks and credit unions, Unisys mainframes have a validation program which checks explicitly for this exploit.