My grandmother used to say "Excuse me, I'm just going to spend a penny."

My cousin lives in Bolder, CO and started just throwing all change below a quarter on the sidewalk outside the restaurant 20 years ago. He hated the jingle in his pockets. He figured some kid or homeless person would pick up the change and put it to better use that he would.

I don't use cash for many things now days. Just the other day at the grocery store close to me they had the credit card machines go down. It was cash only, and I had to pay with cash. I just threw the coins in small wicker basket I have on a shelf in my closet. When it gets full I cash it in. It has been many long years for it to get to 1/2 way full. It may take another 10 or more years before I ever cash it in at this rate.

The USA had our own coin crisis a few year back.
Credit card or rounding-up only.

It makes sense for high-volume businesses to structure prices/tax to round out to an even number.

Mexican Pesos used to contain silver worth more than the face value..

What is a penny and why would you want it?

Ahem, to put through the souvenir penny masher at museums and stuff. I have a cache of pre-1982 US 1c coins just for that purpose. Yes, I am a geek. Once they shifted to copper-clad zinc in 1983 they don't mash so nicely and are streaky with the Zn.

And we are still blessed with the nearly obsolete coin due to a few Abe-loving Illinoinians and the massive zinc lobby. Kind of like allegedly that it's the linen industry and Crane Paper in MA keeping the dollar bill alive.

Now on a deeper level, what the heck is a 1/10 penny and how does that even have a place in our gas prices?

https://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/fuel-consumption/why-is-9-10-added-to-gas-prices.htm

Happened to me once at an event dinner—our tab was off by a few cents each time, up and down. The server just shrugged, said it was some rounding thing in the system. Ended up being kind of funny, especially when splitting the bill later.

SPAMbot, which is not nearly as desirable as a fembot ala Austin Powers.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Yeah, but the crazy thing is that this thread is 3 years old, long before they stopped production of pennies.

And as a side note, I saw an article by a numismatist that said that pennies weren't going anywhere because there's a ton of them out there that have been made already as long as folks don't start hoarding them.

I’m surprised that they haven’t made a public plea to have people take all of their buckets and water bottles filled with pennies and cash them in. There just has to be huge amounts of pennies sitting around in people’s homes just because they don’t want to carry them around or deal with them.

Next time I go to the credit union, I’ll take my small jar of them with. I will also keep some in the car for when I go through drive thrus or use cash.

We go to an Amish grocery in Fountain City, Indiana now and then. They don't use electricity, so obviously have no internet and cannot take credit cards. It's cash only, and they have bowls of change and dollar bills by the tills. We take about $50 in cash when we go there.

The lighting is all from skylights and the slicers in their deli section are air-powered. Compressed air comes from gasoline-powered air compressors out back of the building. I don't know how they keep the deli meats and cheeses cold, they may rent coolers, use ice, or have gasoline powered compressors.
Strangely, I'm pretty sure I saw them using cell phones.

A nickel for your thoughts

I've got a smallish jar that I use for change (probably holds 24-32oz of liquid). It's full. I guess I need to take it to someplace that's got a coin counting machine (coinstar?). The last time that I used one you could get cash after a small fee was deducted, or you could get full credit for your change on Amazon. If that's still the deal, then it's the best option (we buy from A anyway).

I guess I could figure out how many rolls I need and then take them to my credit union after rolling them.

Coinstar won’t accept pre64 coins.

They are a good substitute for a screw-in household fuse. (I imagine anyone under 40 is wondering what a screw-in fuse is)

According to my banks there is a problem with change sorting machines. They can’t get parts for the old ones and the new ones are so expensive they only have them at one or two locations. The branches send bags of unsorted coins to the central branch to be sorted.

I probably wouldn't send them old coins anyway. A lot of the silver colored coins are silver vs copper clad. And most of the pennies (except a few years) before 64 are wheat pennies.

They were lying

That ia a ripoff!

We ate out on Wednesday night and did not want a place that we would have leftovers. So we chose a burger place. They have a goofy way of orderings while standing at a counter, and asking for a tip on the charge screen.

We move to the dining area, and that is where I can order a Yuengling larger. Happy hour price is $3.00 plus sales tax. I gave the guy a $5 and he handed me back a $1.25 We sure as heck don't have 75 cents on a three buck purchase. So no tip for him, he already took it.