It's time to retire the penny

Monday, April 07, 2008 (Times Colonist)
"What do you do with your pennies? Carefully count them out when paying for something? Drop them into that little tray by the cash register, regarding them as worthless? Or hoard them, putting them into a jar that someday your kids will have to deal with?..."

(http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/comment/story.html?id=e0905433-328b-4ada-a986-055810356577)

Amber says: Poor penny. What did it ever do to you? Actually, I'm torn on this topic. I am a Numismatist (Coin collector. Where is your mind?) and I have quite a few pennies in my collection. Old ones, shiny ones, foreign ones... I am guilty of hoarding the copper beauties. My sister hates pennies. And I mean, absolutely hates them. She will get rid of them as fast as she can- usually by pawning them off on an unsuspecting 5 year- old at the mall or something similar... Working in retail, I had people REFUSE to take pennies. "I'm sorry, I dont have a nickel, would you like five pennies?" "*Huff* No! Keep them! I will start shopping at *insert competition here*." And I'm not even kidding. People hate them.

I don't. I don't really care for them either... but I wouldn't put it on my list of things to abolish before the year 2010 or anything...

I don't see how eliminating the penny would cause a Y2K disaster or anything, but it would screw us up for a while. I read somewhere that polls show that people don't think a penny is worth bending over to pick up anymore. Sad. I always do. Haven't you heard the saying? "Find a penny, pick it up..." Couldn't we all use some good luck? What is the saying going to become? "Find a half-dollar, pick it up..."? Would that be enough for the hassle of bending over?

All things considered, I think I would like to keep the penny. It's familiar. It's shiny. It's... a penny! Where would "penny candy" be without it? (Oh, wait... isn't it "nickel candy" now?)

Oh, and I know this is a Canadian article, but they are talking about doing the same thing in the US. It was on the Colbert Report the other night. Look it up, they've even got Obama talking about it. :-)