Posted 7/02/2006 01:28:00 PM by Douglas

Get rid of the penny.

For the first time, the U.S. Mint has said pennies are costing more than 1 cent to make this year, thanks to higher metal prices. "The penny is going to disappear soon unless something changes in the economics of commodities," says Robert Hoge, an expert on North American coins at The American Numismatic Society.

That very idea of spending 1.2 cents to put 1 cent into play strikes many people as "faintly ridiculous," says Jeff Gore, of Elkton, Md., founder of a little group called Citizens for Retiring the Penny.

The problem is every cash drawer in the country is set up to handle the coinage we currently use, so you can't introduce anything new till you get rid of something. Which has made me wonder in the past why no one at the mint wants to implement any change. Oh yeah, they make a shit load of money from idiots that think a quarter with their state on it is somehow collectable.

It costs the Mint less than five cents for each 25-cent piece it produces. So in a process called seigniorage, the government makes money whenever someone "buys" a coin then chooses not to spend it.

The Treasury estimates that it has earned about $5 billion in seigniorage profits from the quarters so far.

That's a lot of quarters sitting in the bottom of an ashtray.