I have heard this before and then again today. It cost 5 cents to make a U.S. penny. We are all very proud of our great land, and there are some brilliant people on this site. I mean brilliant, educated minds. So please someone tell me why we still make penny's at a 500% loss on each one?

Because that's the way we've allways done it

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James L. "Jim" Rhiner

Three words: United States Government

There will come a time when the lowest denomination of coin the US produces will be the quarter.

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The Last Standing Knight

and it will be worth a penny in buying power

Depending on metal prices, a penny takes about 1.2 cents to make. But we don't use it once then throw it away. Each coin might be used hundreds of times.

nickels have about 7-8c worth of nickel in them wait until nickel content is 10-20c. think you will see too many in circulation ?

pre 82 pennys are all copper they are worth a bit more than 1c

of course 20$ gold and even 50$ gold bullion eagles are worth FAR more than face...

greshams law. look it up.

I save all the wheat pennies and pre-82 pennies I run across because they have more copper content. I doubt that I ever do anything with them. Maybe my grandchildren can do something with one day.

You could melt them down and make your own computer
WOW - Look out Apple
Finally - A computer for mere pennies

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In dog years I'm dead.

That's ok, the way this country is going the only thing we will be using soon is our skills to barter and whatever we had the trade. I keep alot of pennies too, because I put them in my son's piggybank. I might need to have them to help me pay for a gallon of gas soon.

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Vaya con Dios

Most young people don't care about investment, nor do they know how to barter or the value of items.

All I know, I wouldn't give a plug nickel for a ipod, iphone or used pad.

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Lost it all in a boat accident

The biggest waste is the $1.00 bill. They only last 4-6 months in circulation. I was impressed when I visited Italy with the Euro monetary set up. They use .01, .05, .20, .50, 1.0, and 2.0 Euro in coins. The smallest bill is a 5 Euro. The most important thing was the coins are all graduated in size, and the 1.0 and 2.0 Euro are bi-metal, the coins are distinctive enough to not have any confusion between then which has always been the buggabo of the many different $1.00 coins the US has tried to get into circulation. Here's a 1.0 Euro compared to a US Quarter.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

The young people I see at the gun shows seem to do just fine

When I got stationed in England in the late '60s, they had just replaced their traditional penny, which was about the size of our silver dollar, with one about the size of our penny because people were melting them down for the copper. I don't remember the exact numbers, but the face value of a ton of the big pennies was only about 1/4 the price of the copper they contained.

I wonder if our pennies would make good bullets.

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Age + Treachery = JohnnieB

That's why I said most.

However, if they are carrying and bottle feeding a kid goat dressed in overalls and have purple hair...I might question their judgment of fashion a bit. After all, how are you going to carry out any guns or stuff while holding a goat?

I swear on my honor- I saw that at a gunshow sometime back!

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Lost it all in a boat accident

IF we can't get rid of the useless little things, what would be so difficult in making them out of aluminum or some other cheap substance like some other countries do?

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Jon

They last a long, long time. If our smallest unit of money was something larger, you wouldn't be paying 2%, 3% tax each to several gov't agencies, you would be paying 5%, 10%, etc.

Before my coin collection was stolen in 1968, I had a very fine collection of "white cents", the flying eagle penny. I haven't looked at coin prices in years, but I imagine they would bring a pretty you-know-what.

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and what his trumpet saith