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Melting Coins Now Illegal In the U.S.
A number of readers have noted the action by the U.S. Mint to outlaw the melting down or bulk export of coins. This has come about because the value of the precious metals contained in coins now exceeds their face value.
The Mint would rather not have to replace pennies (at a cost of 1.73 cents per) or nickels (at 8.74 cents). The expectation is that Congress will mandate new compositions for some U.S. coins in 2007.
They stopped making em out of copper before the 50's (I forget exactly when its finals week XD)
they make them out of an electroplated nickel alloy now..
Dare i say it shouldn't just be oil we should be concerned about running out?
JUNK METAL coins are now worth more than their face value... I think this is a sign that asteroid mining could be feasible (the average nickel iron monster is worth several trillian.. not counting any incidental precious metals)
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As much as I can understand why they do not want people melting down these coins, how much is the metal really worth in it's "raw" form unrefined?
About 1.7 cents for a current penny, about 2.3cents for a pre-1986 penny, about 7.5 cents for a nickel.
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And to blow your mind even further, the judicial branch makes law too! It's called common law. The federal judiciary and 49 of the 50 states operate under common law. If you don't like it, you have to move to Louisiana or France.
This is a classic 'net argument. Long story short, the destruction of currency *with intent to defraud* is illegal.
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... well, until this law was passed.
There's a great google answer here:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=7
"You are correct, that the only criminal statute regulating the destruction or defacement of U.S. currency requires fraudulent intent."
There are a few famous classroom science experiments that involve the destruction of pennies. Here's hoping that's still legal.
Those are illegal. It's just that no one actually cares enough to enforce it.
It's only illegal if you intend to use/distribute them as 'money'. Novelty items are OK.
(Text as of 2/19/02) 18 U.S.C. 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;
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Actually, I'm guilty of not reading my google answer link in full.
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"You are correct, that the only criminal statute regulating the destruction or defacement of U.S. currency requires fraudulent intent." only applies to *coins*
Further down, there's a statute related to bills, which our researcher
"Note that this is also an intent-based crime. An element of the offense is "...intent to render such [currency] unfit to be reissued.""
So lighting your cigar with a bill might just be illegal after all. However, under these laws, dissolving a penny in acid isn't.
There's a bit more here:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=4
Getting rid of pennies has nothing to do with getting rid of cents. The two are distinct. Most banks already handle transactions down to the 6th decimal place. My bank account at any given time could have a certain number of thousandths of a cent in it. The only time it has to be converted into coins is when I withdraw it. Getting rid of the penny just means that physical money transactions have to be rounded. The same thing happened when we got rid of the 1/2 cent piece. When you buy something and the total comes to a non-nickel-aligned amount, it gets rounded. Easy, simple, any idiot can handle the math.
Australia manages just fine.
:) you pay to the exact cent. Actual prices are still specified to individual cents, the rounding is done on the total purchase not on each individual item.
You just round to the nearest 5 cents. If something costs $13.23 then you end up paying $13.25 if you pay cash, if it costs $13.27 then you also pay $13.25 if you pay cash. When paying by EFTPOS (think swiping your debit card in the US) or credit card or cheque (think check it the US
It works perfectly well, sure you can get 2c worth of free petrol (gas...) by putting $40.02 in the tank, but no one does because it's 2c... Sure you could try buying 2c (or 7c) worth of petrol over and over again, but no one does that either because it's retarded.
Just because you remove something from cash transactions doesn't mean you change the "base" of your currency - to claim that is just being moronic. Amazingly Australia didn't collapse, the banks didn't have a field day with "false" interest rates, in fact the only thing that changed is you don't end up carrying 10kg of coins at the end of the day...
Inflation means that a penny now is a *much* *much* finer resolution on prices. People managed perfectly well 50 years ago with a much coarser price scheme... Seriously who gives a stuff if something costs $12.32 or $12.33 - can you even tell the difference at the end of week?
've worked in the USA, Europe and the UK. I've never had a bank account with more than 2 decimal places. What's more, I work on business & accounting software, and the only times I've seen that use a resolution finer than what's available in the local currency is for highly specialised functions - and even then, it's only for internal, intermediate calculations.
You really need to get out more. Gasoline, cheap electronics parts like resistors, mutual fund values... lots of stuff is accounted for at greater than 2 decimal point accuracy.
You conveniantly ignore all the occassions you buy a $5.27 lunch and save 2c. Or you're too stupid to read a simple post. Or maybe to stupid to understand what rounding means.
It averages out - sometimes you pay a cent or two above the total price. Sometimes you pay a cent or two below the total price. If you really care about 2c you can always arrange to be paying less, you just have to add/remove items with non-multiples of 5c prices until your total ends in 1c, 2c, 6c, or 7c.
Of course no one does because, they know it evens out in the long term (heck even in the short term).
You can't seriously be that dumb, there are only 5 possible results for an individual transaction.
1. the price paid is exactly the total price
2. the store gets an extra 1c
3. the store gets an extra 2c
4. the customer gets an extra 1c
5. the customer gets an extra 2c
There is no 3 and 4 cent option, as is pretty obvious if you think for about a quarter of second instead of just making shit up.
And if you are retarded enough to care, then just always arrange to but things which total $X.02. Congratulations, you save 2c on every transaction you make. Of course the time required to make sure the transaction ends in 2, and the extra items you have to buy to do so will probably make it not worth while - but feel free to stick it to the man!
For everyone else it averages out.