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Obama wants cheaper pennies and nickels


Dockwalliper

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Bravo, TG! What an analysis! Though I don't agree with every point, I love how insightful you are!

 

1) I think the gov't already has done that research under more... enlightened congresses. Might only take the signature on a law to get those coins minted. Maybe switching out machines and suppliers would take a year, but the research should be done.

 

2) Liberty would be great but there's too much financial interest in more tangible designs. I wonder how much each parks' tourist numbers have improved

 

3) dead on

 

4) never liked holed...

 

5) great point I never thought about!

 

6) keep it as is.

 

7) not gonna touch this one!

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Thanks TG!

 

The intrinsic value of coins is based on the commodity market, so reducing coin mintage would probably at best reduce the intrinsic value of coins by a fraction of a percent.

 

Were you perhaps thinking of something else, e.g. purchasing power?

 

IIRC, there was a penny shortage in the 1970s and some places ran promos involving them. I think some McDonald's, for example, offered 50c + a small fries for a roll of pennies.

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What do you mean by the commodity market?

 

Nah, I was just thinking about the factor of reduced mintage only, if that alone could have much effect. Thank you for answering that question!

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Commodity market = the metals market. London Metal Exchange (LME), Comex, and some others.

 

Intrinsic value of a coin = value of the coin as scrap metal.

 

So value of a coin as scrap (as sites such as coinflation try to show/calculate) would not be affected by mintage.

 

The collector value of a coin, will likely be increased somewhat by a lower mintage if it is significantly lower to be significant. The current ATB quarters, (even also some of the last state/terr quarters) for example, have much lower mintages than previously, and as such may command a higher value in UNC down the road. However...

 

Reducing a mintage (especially if the reduced mintage was known ahead of time) would usually increase hoarding in expectation of it being a rarity later. The 1931-S cent is a good example - people took notice at the time, and so it is frequently encountered in higher grades.

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Hm. I decided to flip things around and see what happens if I propose this. Guaranteed to be extremely unpopular but who knows.

 

1. Introduce tax on issuing new dollar notes. The idea is to promote the usage of dollar coins. Since people still want to use dollar notes and it's more expensive to produce dollar notes in the long run, why not make money from it? Killing two birds with one stone.

 

2. Since pennies cost too much to make, weigh too much, and it's difficult to get people off the mentality of "penny pinchers", let's give it to them, at a cost. Some banks have already started to do it - if people try to cash in too much coins, there comes fees. The idea is to get people to use the coins and circulate them in the public, not just throwing it back to the bank for roll searching purposes.

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