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4,952,000,000 pennies were minted in 2004 alone

Not even close to a significant fraction.

My company works with the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (the folks who print the bills). The Bureau issues transparent vinyl purses and packs for employees to carry their lunch and belongings. This makes it easier to see whether somebody is walking off with sheets of un-cut currency.

We also worked with the US Mint (the folks who mint the coinage). They told a story about metal detectors tied to biometrics that were so sensitive that when a woman became pregnant, the changes in the metal chemistry of her blood (increased iron, etc...) were enough to have to retake the biometric scan. That one always seemed apocryphal to me (but a very cool concept nonetheless).

Not only did they convert incorrectly, they measured incorrectly to begin with. A penny is 19.05mm in diameter, not 15mm.

As far as I know, it is illegal to destroy currency, whether paper or coin (in the U.S. that is) and I believe similar laws are standard in most developed countries.

----- Title 18 United States Code, Section 331 Whoever fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates, impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the mints of the United States, or any foreign coins which are by law made current or are in actual use or circulation as money within the United States; or Whoever fraudulently possesses, passes, utters, publishes, or sells, or attempts to pass, utter, publish, or sell, or brings into the United States, any such coin, knowing the same to be altered, defaced, mutilated, impaired, diminished, falsified, scaled, or lightened - Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both ----

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/331.html

http://www.usmint.gov/consumer/18USC331.cfm

Original research on this topic: here

Here is a Spanish Milled Dollar reference. And here's the official info about it from the US Mint.

'Mexican Peso' indeed. Harumph.

American coins are sort of like this too - made of layers of differing metals or alloys. Quarters, nickels and dimes are pure copper inside, clad with a mixture of copper and nickel. Pennies are zinc plated with copper.

I think that there is enough space between the particles in the metals at the newtonian scale that there should be no significant size difference between two different metals being shrunk by this method. At the atomic or subatomic scale, there might be a measurable difference difference, but i doubt it would be enough to affect the bond between the outer ring and the center. But who knows? It would be an interesting experiment.

Why, exactly, would the government encourage people to destroy currency? What public policy goal would that serve? (Making people poorer?)

Governments tax their citizens...despite the fact that taxation makes people poorer.

The government does not encourage people to destroy money. They actually have a strong dislike for anyone who dinks with the monetary supply.

In a discussion that involved money getting destroyed in a microwave, I thought I would find a humorous way to bring up the issue that you don't destroy the actual value of a dollar bill if you destroy the dollar bill. If a dollar bill got lost, then it is pretty much the same thing as a dollar in taxes.

You are also right that the mint is pretty much controlled by the federal reserve, and that in an economy where most money changes hands electronically, the Federal Reserve does more to control the money supply through lending to banks than through printing money. The 2003 production figures for the US Mint indicate that the Mint printed a scant $896 Million in change...chump change. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing handle printed currency. I couldn't find a quick list of the number of dollar bills printed, but I am sure it is an equally unimpressive figure. Both the Mint and Bureau or Engraving and Printing seem to encourage collecting.

dropping a dime in a wishing well is pretty much like giving Uncle Sam ten cents (minus production cost).

You are correct in pointing out that in today's economy, more money changes hands electronically than as currency. The Federal Reserve controls the monetary supply through the banking system. However, all the rules that apply to currency are still valid. BTW, I would expect that there's several million people work on their $12.50 collection of quarters. Ten million quarter collections equal $125,000,000 for the government.

I never carry anything but quarters. This was a bit troubling when I paid the deposit on my house, but it's a small price to pay for keeping the prying eyes of The Man out of my financial transactions.

However, if you were to carry all quarters, carry at least one of each state quarter design minted to this time.

I never carry anything but quarters. This was a bit troubling when I paid the deposit on my house, but it's a small price to pay for keeping the prying eyes of The Man out of my financial transactions.

However, if you were to carry all quarters, carry at least one of each state quarter design minted to this time.

I never carry anything but quarters. This was a bit troubling when I paid the deposit on my house, but it's a small price to pay for keeping the prying eyes of The Man out of my financial transactions.

However, if you were to carry all quarters, carry at least one of each state quarter design minted to this time.

No. According to these guys it's 97.5% zinc, not aluminum. It's got a 2.5% copper skin.

Haha! Your mint makes spoons!

Hosers : )

But as far as I can tell, these folks are the real thing -- they issue real money, *and* kitchy overpriced collectibles.

build your own with xGrid!

More like: build your own with money!

Following up myself...
Well, coming at it from the usmint.GOV site I found it links to moneyfactory.GOV, so they'ev just squatted the site. Too bad they pander to those who get confused with URLs that don't end in .com (or start with www) instead of just bouncing them to the .gov site. Presumably they publicise the .com otherwise we wouldn't have the link in the FA. What's the point in having 200 TLDs if they all alias to .coms?

I don't know why dollar signs arent drawn properly

What makes you think that they aren't drawn properly? I'm looking at an image of the $100 US Platinum coin, and though it's hard to see, it appears to me that it only has one vertical bar.

I'd say that usage on actual US money validates the use of the 1-bar $, wouldn't you? :)

There's not much in the way of real copper in pennies any more. See here So you'll need pre 1837 pennies to get pure copper!

Gold, it's a lot harder to conterfiet. And when you do, it's radioactive.

Anyway, getting rid of the penny would be just the thing to save the dollar coin. Consider how most people get coins: they receive them from merchants as change. Merchants don't like stocking more than 4 kinds of coins, which is why nobody uses half-dollar or dollar coins.

(Yes, we (the U.S.) have half-dollar coins! Haven't even seen one for years. They're too big for vending machines, as were the old Eisenhower dollars. But they're still available.)

If we did away with pennies, that would make room in the cash registers for dollar coins. Having those would make it a lot easier to pay transit fares, tolls, and to buy those overpriced soft drinks everybody guzzles.

There used to be a half-dime that was half the weight of the current dime, but there were (of course) some usability issues ...

I find this unlikely since the penny is mostly zinc (only 2.5% Cu), and all the other coins are at least 75% copper.

According to the U.S. Mint:

U.S. coins currently are made in the following six denominations: cent, nickel, dime, quarter, half dollar, and dollar.

If you are talking about the gap between 10 and 50, it seems equally plausible to use a 20 (twice 10; as in US paper currency) or a 25 (half fifty; as in US coins).

Oh wait...

Oh wait...

I laughed when I saw this story because just now I was trying to understand Apple's relationship with Linux regarding Quicktime. I complained earlier today to the U.S. Mint because of this page, which is a sublte advertisement for the Microsoft Media Player. WMP has significant proprietary features, and just linking to Microsoft as the sole standard implies something.

The immediate licensing problem in WMP may simply be a side effect of DRM, but of course Microsoft intends to use WMP as a wedge to push its own standards into what is now fairly generic commerce -- as it did with MSIE. I told the rep at the U.S. Mint (who knows if anyone will care) that it was unseemly for the government to tacitly endorse a private company by offering just one format, even providing a link to the company's site to get the player, especially where across town the government just recently busted Microsoft for monopoly abuse.

Anyway, Apple doesn't make a QT player for Linux (right?) but appears supportive of it (right?), and there are options to access QT content from *nix. Meanwhile, Microsoft's antagonism towards GPL is very well known, and may appear over WMP. Of course, generic MPEG does streaming, which QT plugins will play. (Also, there's Real, yech.) Maybe this is most another Windows versus Macintosh struggle, but I'd hate to see the government take sides, and I don't trust MS.

On standards and compatibility ... I've written several emails to other government sites that sport the infernal "best viewed with Internet Explorer" links. I doubt I can take credit, but my state of Virginia dropped the MSIE tags. (They originally wrote back explaining, "Frontpage told us to say that." :)

BTW ... why was I hanging out at the U.S. Mint site? My 6 y.o. thinks the state quarter program is very cool, and the Mint even has a whole kids' site built around the damn things. I'm getting tired of state factoids, but am impressed by the savvy of the Mint. We've already calculated how much the Mint would make if everyone in the U.S. took a complete set of commemorative quarters out of circulation.

You must have forgotten that we live in a Republic, not a Democracy. The people have no real power whatsoever. Even if the people voted to repeal internet taxation, the politicians are under no obligation whatsoever to obey the vote. It's not really any different than a presidential election in which the Electors are under no obligation to cast their votes for the candidate that wins the popular election in a given state.

The *real* reason that internet taxation is wrong goes Way Way Back(TM) to our childhood in which we were usually taught that if we didn't have money to buy something, we couldn't buy it. The government has tried several ways to increase revenue.

First, during the Civil War, the government enacted the Bureau of Internal Revenue. This was a very small amount compared to excise taxes and tariff duties (the old way of doing it). The first self-expanding perpetual bureaucracy is born. Read more about the Civil War Bureau of Internal Revenue Here... And a way-way-cool tax history museum...

During the Johnson administration, the gubment took money off the gold standard and just printed as much as it needed to cover its spending programs. This ridiculous endeavor led to the hyper-inflation of the 70's and the 99.9% top incremental income tax bracket during the Carter administration, and the double-digit interest rates going into the 80's. It's amazing to me that the government didn't learn during this time that raising taxes does not increase revenue for the gubment - IT LOWERS IT because of the burden it places on the economy. People have less money to spend, so there are fewer sales, fewer profits, lower salaries, and LESS INCOME TO TAX. But, I digress...

Enter Reaganomics - now, whatever you learned in your left-wing democratic union-controlled public school about Reagan and his economic policies was blatantly incorrect. When Reagan took office in 1981, the government's purse had 18 bullet holes in it and was leaking money like a sieve. Our great country was spiraling almost inexorably toward bankruptcy, and we came very close to defaulting on a round or two of long term bonds. The fact is that after the gigantic tax cuts in the early 80's, IRS revenue INCREASED. That's right, cutting taxes INCREASED revenue for the government. *shock*

"but, but, but, what about the deficit?" - okay, the deficit was caused by Harry Truman. Yes, the deficit spending in the 80's was mainly due to the Truman Doctrine, which required the US to fight the spread of communism throughout the world. There was this little country east of Europe, called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, that had at some point in history developed nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and was on the rampage. Since WWII, they had already installed their communist regimes in most of eastern Europe and were pushing west. The Arms Race was a very necessary evil, and as much as I hate to say it, we had to win the cold war no matter what. Combine that with an unchecked social welfare program that was often corrupt and abused, and we were suddenly saddled with mind boggling debt.

Here's a little perspective on the debt: if you were to pave a 12' wide road with one billion one dollar bills, you would have a road long enough to drive 252,000 miles, about the distance to the moon. If you were to pave a road with the national debt's worth of one dollar bills, you could drive 1.5 million miles. However, there isn't enough cotton on earth to make that many one dollar bills. (FYI all US currency bills are 6.14" x 2.61" and weigh approximately one gram per note, regardless of denomination).

The point here is in agreement with yours that the government is stupid when it comes to fiscal management. When their budget runs over, they just raise more taxes to pay for it. They don't care about the long term effects because there's no accountability. The worst that can happen is that they'll either get "voted" out of office or hit their term limit. But, nothing they do while in office will usually have a negative effect until they're long gone..

We need a balanced budget LAW, just just some sissy amendment that can be changed and re-written to suit the convenience of the politicians, but something that is irrevokable, unmodifiable, and carries the status of a high crime. IN fact, I can write it right now, and IANEAL:

"It shall be a high crime against the United States for any individual or group of individuals to cause a government agency to spend more money than it receives."

"It shall be a high crime against the United States for any individual or group of individuals to cause the amount of money a government agency receives to increase at an annual rate that is higher than the sum of the rate of inflation and the rate of growth of the Gross Domestic Product."

We owe it to ourselves (literally!) to pay down the national debt. Every bond you buy from the government represents money borrowed by the government, from you, to spend on $4000 toilet seats, private jets, politicians' vacations around the world, and let's not forget the $58,000 486 machines that the government is probably still buying.

Some other interesting government links:
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing
All About our Tax System
All About our Tax System, the government's version of the truth
The United States Mint
The Social "Security" Administration

For the sake of us outside the US, just how big is a quarter, anyway?

An amazingly, entertainingly hokey "cartoon" comparing U.S. currency to that of the world (which apparently now consists only of France) can be found at The U.S. Mint's Coins of the World page

The short version is about .9 inches, a.k.a 2.3 cm in diameter.

The article says "The 15-inch screen is all of 1.4 millimeters thick -- about the size of two quarters back-to-back," but a SINGLE quarter is 1.75mm, so says the U.S. Mint.

The article says "The 15-inch screen is all of 1.4 millimeters thick -- about the size of two quarters back-to-back," but a SINGLE quarter is 1.75mm, so says the U.S. Mint.

True. THat's not what they've done. The dollar has devalued, relative to its old purchasing power. We have called it inflation, so you might not have realized what was happening, I suppose.

You could exchange your dollar for a dollar of silver. And you still can. You just have to go to some place where you can buy silver.

What was once a ``dollar of silver'' now costs about $5 and up , when you ``... go to some place where you can buy silver.''.

So far so bad. The really interesting part is that before the Federal Reserve got into the act in 1913, our nation had a history of mild deflation: the dollar gained purchasing power slowly but steadily (see here, at your library.) THat was great for widows and orphans, and since it was a steady trend, it didn't hurt borrowers. Since 1913, we have had HUGE inflation, which dwarfs the inflation we experienced during the civil war (see here [pdf]).

Back to the point: you were technically correct, and dead wrong.

Yeah, the Sacagawea $1 coin is still made. You can even buy them by the sack if you want. The old Susan B. Anthony dollars, which looked a lot like quarters, are still circulated but haven't been made since 1981.

According to the U.S. Mint catalog, golden dollars are still being produced every year. (Had me fooled. I honestly haven't seen one in a store since 2000.)

Yeah, remember those things? The
Sacajawea dollar coins that were supposed to be in use everywhere by now, except that people kept pulling magpies and stashing them away in socks without ever actually spending them, just like the Susan B. Anthony dollars before them.

Americans may or may not have noticed that the $1 bill is the only one that hasn't been redesigned with the larger off-center portraits, and it never will. It wasn't "officially" planned that the dollar coin would replace the dollar bill, but clearly that was the hope.

I want them back, and I want them everywhere. I want to be able to stick them into soda machines instead of having to carry around four times as many heavy quarters. I want them worse than I want to be able to tell my paper bills apart by glancing at the color, because dammit, they're so convenient. But the Mint seems to refuse to produce any more, and nobody but me wants to spend the ones they get at the Post Office.

Sadly, the Mint seems slow to respond to new ideas. Much like the rest of any given federal government, I suppose.

I've always been fascinated with foreign currency (specifically, the printed variety), and the Euro is the most interesting to come around in a long time. Is there any place online one can order printed currency or coin ala the US Mint? (http://www.usmint.gov/ for coins or http://www.treas.gov/ for printed currency-- US Mint apparently handles international orders for those curious about US currency, not sure about the Treasury.)

The face value of currency is already close to meaningless. Something about "The Gold Standard" not having been followed in quite some time.

Coins, if I am not mistaken, already cost more to mint than their value.

Now for the on-topic... A new format is great, except for a few pitfalls: What about all the computers that have CD-ROMS and DVD drives? And cars with CD players? Perhaps if this came out several years ago it would have a chance. But now, with hard drives getting smaller and smaller with larger capacities, as well as solid-state memory, the portable device market won't pick them up, either, especially if people have to pay for music they already own.

A quarter is a denomination of US money. It is valued at US$0.25. It is a round metallic coin of measurements: 24.26mm (diameter) x 1.75mm (thickness) and weighs 5.670 g. It has a reeded (ridged) edge with 119 reeds. The front has a embossed picture of the first US president, George Washington. The back has a embossed picture of an eagle (the US symbol for freedom).

Info on other US coins can be found here: http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/index.cfm?act ion=coin_specifications.

They are certainly still in production. I just received them as part of the 2000 US Mint Proof and Uncirculated coin sets that can be purchased from the US Mint.

Personally, I think they should be taken out of production. It's just as easy to carry two quarters as one half dollar. The fifty cent piece has about as much redundancy as a two dollar bill.

Heh. I just checked the us mint website. You read the specs off the "half dollar" column. A simple mistake, I guess. But still, how can you confuse a half dollar with a dime? Yeesh.

Ryan

According to this page at the United States Mint, a dime:

• Standard Weight: 11.340 g
• Standard Diameter: 1.205 in. / 30.61 mm
• Thickness: 2.15 mm

Basically, it's the smallest coin currently in circulation in the United States of America.

ok... I'm going to stand up and admit to some ignorance here... can someone please relate the british monetary system to the illustrious "pound sterling" reported on the financials . . . PLEASE!
what is a pence? and a ukp? and even though it isn't involved here ... quid? I've been reading more and more discusions of british money and every one of them seems to introduce some new term that I'm going to have to guess is modern slang.

as turnabout and to explain what I mean here is the American system in terms of the US Dollar.

a penny (slang: a copper) is a one cent piece and is worth 0.01 USD; making it the smallest monetary unit off-line. a nickel is a five cent piece; a dime is ten cents, and a quarter (more recent slang: a silver) is twenty five cents; making four quarters equal to 1.00 USD. These are all common coins. less common coins are the half dollar (old slang: a slug) at fifty cents and the silver dollar at one dollar; the silver dollar was more recently reissued as the Susan B. Anthony Dollar and was a dismal flop in terms of public acceptance. There are more gimics in progress, like commemerative state quarters (I've got all five so far!) and a "gold dollar"...

Curency comes in 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500, 1000, 5000, 10,000, and 100,000 USD bills; officially they're Treasury Reserve Notes - and they're all the same ugly green. The one dollar bill is also called a buck, a green back, and a skin (all slang, in order of decreasing commonality). The two dollar bill is rare. The five dollar bill is called a spot in some circles, a spot is a ten dollar bill in others. slang for the hundred USD bill is a 'C' note, while 1000 USD is a grand or 'G'. most bills have a president pictured on the front so they often go by the name of the president... a Franklin is a hundred, a Grant is fifty, a Jackson or an Andy Jackson is twenty, Hamilton is a ten, Lincoln a five, Jefferson is two, a Washington is one dollar. bills larger than 500 USD are no longer printed and being removed from circulation, with some of the real big ones never having been publicly circulated.

ok, y'all got the point.... for those that really want to know more the US Treasury and US Mint are both using president Gore's invention.