Poll of the Day > How is the National Coin Shortage treating you?

(+) Yeah! (+)

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Good time to start abolishing coins less than a quarter.

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Is it just because the mint hasn't printed any coins this year so banks don't have them to give out? I imagine there are still plenty of coins in circulation, it is not like people are Scrooge Mcducking all of the coins in the country.

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What if there was a secret recall on coins?

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Perfect opportunity to scrap 1c pieces like we did in Australia decades ago

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Dikitain posted...

Is it just because the mint hasn't printed any coins this year so banks don't have them to give out? I imagine there are still plenty of coins in circulation, it is not like people are Scrooge Mcducking all of the coins in the country.

The explanation I've heard is that between people spending less all around and many more transactions being cashless for fear of Covid, and people trying to save money any way they can, coins just aren't moving fluidly right now like they normally do.

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Poor argonaitweakened.

I actually wasn't aware of this, now the "we'll buy change" sign I saw at QT makes sense.

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I recall seeing someone mention that their store was only able to get like 2 or 3 rolls of coins when they normally get 20-30.

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I'd only heard about this a few days ago, but it makes sense when you consider how many places aren't doing business in person and a general trend of people moving away from cash payments due to COVID.

rjsilverthorn posted...

I'd only heard about this a few days ago, but it makes sense when you consider how many places aren't doing business in person and a general trend of people moving away from cash payments due to COVID.

Pretty much. Cashless is the way to go these days, and that means there are a whole lot of coins that have effectively been temporarily taken out of circulation.

JixHedgehog posted...

Perfect opportunity to scrap 1c pieces like we did in Australia decades ago

I really don't know why Americans are so resistant to ditching the penny. I see a lot of them concerned about being cheated by rounding, but that's really not a significant issue. Out of curiosity, I went through my books for 2019 (which are all non-cash transactions because I just export my bank/credit statements into Excel) and rounded every Expense number to the nearest nickel (how it's done in Canada) to simulate using cash for it.

Over the course of the entire year, I spent ~$47,600, and if every single one of those transactions had been cash, not having the penny would mean I'd have lost 34 cents. Sure, that is technically a loss, mostly due to the fact that $X.99 prices are so common and they get rounded up (though I could easily see it going the other way), but it's a loss of 0.0007% of what I spent. "It adds up!"... to an extra ice cream cone every decade. I'm so glad I don't use cash much and therefore can avoid getting so horribly ripped off.

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