There is a great article here about whether or not we should retire the penny

if the u.s. stopped manufacturing the one cent coin i'm sure there are enough of these in jars in homes throughout the country that nobody would ever need be without a penny ...

Maybe that's a good reason to stop production of the penny...... I don't think it should happen though.

Nah don't stop the cent. It's my favorite circulating coin of the US. What they need to do is change the metal and bring back the wheat back. That alone is enough to make me buy mint/proof sets just for those.

We don't have cents, pennies, nickels, dimes or quarters here. Only Pogs...and they don't even bother to make a 1 cent Pog.

I'm all for ditching the cent, it's time has passed

Today I saw an article which said that in Finland people just trash the 1 and 2 cent coins.

http://www.n-tv.de/684571.html
(in German)

May be a little exaggerated. But since these pieces are not really worth much, and not needed due to the rounding regulations, I can well imagine they are not welcome. Coin collectors excepted maybe ...

Christian

Maybe they should just throw all of these unwanted 1 & 2 € cents in big buckets and give them to charity. The kids around here hold penny drives during the school year quite often and they raise a fair amount of money. My son's old elementary school had a 1million penny challange. It took them two year to get the million pennies donated but they did it.

Yes, that may work. According to the article, hoarding the pieces and then taking a whole bunch to a bank makes no sense since the commercial banks in Finland usually charge too much. But maybe there are special conditions for charities.

The reason why this piece of news made it to the media is that the Finnish EU Presidency (1 Jul - 31 Dec) has just begun. At the opening event in Helsinki on Saturday, this undersecretary of the Ministery of Finance said that the 1 and 2 cent coins were not used in Finland, due to the rounding regulations. And since the circulation coins are legal tender in all euro countries, they are not flatly refused in FI either, but most people do not want to use them.

Don't know whether Rauhio was asked about that, or whether he addressed it himself. Anyway, maybe this was his way of suggesting that the rest of Euroland should do away with them too. The Netherlands have, by and large, already done that. And now that making such low value pieces has become so relatively expensive, maybe others will follow ...

Rauhio also said he does not believe that trashing them could be ecologically harmful and that most Finns prefer non-cash payments anyway.

Christian

I think this is the trend in the US as well. Debit or credit cards for most purchases, even those that are rather small.