Coin shortage could turn pennies to nickels

[sweeps]

Save your pennies?
Coin shortage could turn pennies to nickels

[bjl584]

Interesting. I have tons of pennies, but unfortunately I have no practical means to melt them down.

[tinapbeana]

i wish! but since the mint made it illegal to melt them down, i guess re-valuing the penny is the best i can hope for. chances of it happening? i'm guessing slim to none...

[sweeps]

This would be much better than melting down the coins. By melting down pennies, you might eek out a small profit after the costs of melting them down. This new plan would be a 400% profit on your pennies with no effort at all.

[Ima saver]

I just saw that on the news. so far, no one has made any decisions. I never save pennies, but I found a bag of old pennies my mother saved. Wonder if they are worth anything?

[PRICEPLUS]

Regardless of what heppens I will continue to save them.

[nanamom]

i wouldn't mind if they made my pennies worth 5 cents although it would make explaining it to my DS2 tricky, he has just "gotton" the concept of 5 pennies in a nickel.

[shengmei]

Cool. I have tons of pennies.

[rob62521]

Interesting thought...so I guess we would round everything everything to the nearest nickel, right?

[shelbylovesmelby]

I didn't hear that.

But I did hear that i was costing the mint more to make them than they are worth. That's why they say to empty out those piggy banks & get that money back into circulation!

[JBinKC]

It appears it is only a matter of a relatively short time a penny will become obsolete or will be revamped i.e. replaced by cheaper materials like copper plated iron. 2009 will be the 100th anniversary of the Lincoln cent so I predict it will stay around in its current form until then.

I think the reason the penny has endured so long is three fold. Lobbyists, Sales tax fairness and its long tradition for being parsimonious.

I also predict a nickel will change its components soon and perhaps be made smaller. A nickel is worth close to 8 cents in metal since there is a current shortage in nickel metal worldwide.

I am currently saving pre 1982 pennies because they are worth close to double their face value in metal content and has a higher chance than ever to become obsolete soon.

[Aleta]

My son who is an accountant says that it will mess up the tax base.