Have you heard that they’re no longer going to make new pennies? They stopped making them out of copper years ago. That was when a penny was still worth something. The most recent pennies are made of zinc and essentially worthless. Except insofar as making change. That’s important, if you like cash transactions.
Think about that.
They say it’s because pennies made of zinc aren’t worth making – because they cost too much. But without pennies – once the existing supply disappears or even just becomes scarce – it will be harder if not possible to make change and that will mean pushing people to make electronic rather than cash payments. It will become inconvenient to use cash. And then we will be sold on convenience which will take the form of cashless.
Nothing the government does – more finely, the entities that control it do – occurs without intentionality. There is a purpose to pulling the penny. It is to pull us into electronic money, the capstone of the tyranny pyramid.
Cash is the last thing standing in the way of them controlling everything. More finely, controlling everything you do – are allowed to do and prevented from doing – that involves monetary transactions. Is it not obvious we are being slow-walked into this future? One of the first things Trump did after being inaugurated was to invite three “tech” barons to a public hosanna session at the White House. Intention was signaled but many did not receive the signal. Data centers are being built all over the country; ever wonder why and what-for? How come the push to get the population REAL ID’d? Note that this push is very much of a piece with the push to “vaccinate” everyone by threatening to rescind such privileges as being able to shop or travel if they did not get the shot. Well, now you cannot travel – by air – if you do not get REAL ID’d. How long before you can’t bank – or buy – without one?
They have already framed cash as dirty – does anyone remember? I do. At the coffee shop I used to go to – before I was thrown out for non-compliance – you could only pay for coffee with a card. They would not accept cash, despite the technicality that it is still (and was then) legal currency.
Soon, you can expect them to frame cash as an instrument of “terror.” Observe that the predicate has already been set. Trump’s people – and of course, Trump himself – refer to drug smugglers as “narco-terrorists.” The clear purpose there is to equate them with ululating jihadis – which is absurd but purposeful. Drug smugglers deal in cash because it is anonymous and untraceable or at least, much harder to trace. If a guy hands over a stack of $100 bills for a brick of white powder and no one sees the transaction, no one else knows about. This is a true fact, as the saying goes – and that’s the most effective way to craft a larger lie.
Such as dealing in cash (so as to avoid the government) being a form of “terrorism.” Something like that, at any rate. The specifics do not matter anymore than it mattered that the infection rate and fatality rate are two meaningfully different things. It was easy enough to terrorize the population using the lie that everyone who caught cold was probably going to die and also cause the death of others.
It was very effective – for just long enough. It got most of the population to “mask up” and abide by all those now-obviously-ridiculous Sickness Kabuki rituals, such as standing six feet apart and fist-bumping rather than shaking hands. Most of us see that now – that it was ridiculous (and evil) Most of us did not at the time. The “masking up” led to the rolling up – of people’s sleeves, as they lined up to get “vaccinated.” Most of them did that, too. Does anyone remember?
Apply the same technique to the penny – as an attack on the nickel, dime, quarter and dollar bill. Those who use cash are hiding something. They could be terrorists – “narco” this time. Never mind that the guys smuggling drugs aren’t pushing them on anyone; that’s the sort of thing that requires government – as during the last few years and also long before that. Ask any mom who gave birth at a hospital – since the ’60s. They push all kinds of drugs on newborns. But that’s not terroristic. Because when they government does it, it’s “benevolent.”
Anyhow, once they succeed in making it difficult to make change they will say it’s time to get rid of the difficulty – i.e., cash.
And then they will own us completely, utterly.
. . .
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Something else to consider:
The constitution grants Congress the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof, not the president.
It’s unconstitutional for a president to order the cessation of the minting of pennies – only Congress can do that.
But, the constitution is ignored, so who cares, right?
It’s a technicality. Trump did not discontinue the penny, he halted production of it. They remain a legal tender and the billions of them can circulate at face value. This would require Congress to change.
Congress gave up authority such as this when they set up the Joint Commission on the Coinage, that was done when LBJ debased our silver money to clad junk in 1965.
The conspiratorial amongst us might note that by discontinuing the penny cash transactions will most likely be rounded to the nickel, thereby without a doubt increase the demand for a $0.05 coin that costs $0.14 to produce and quite possibly end up offsetting or even increasing mint costs.
I could be wrong, but if 1 cent costs 3.7 – 4 cents would this not be deflation? Like definitions we are to avoid using the word in it’s definition.
Peru hasn’t had a one cent coin in years, yet they make out perfectly fine without it.
Austraya did away with 1 and 2 cent coins back in the early 1990s. I don’t miss them at all, though I now have 1 of each from a hoarder’s house. This man was a smart hoarder. He hoarded metals, steel, Al, Cu, Zn, copper wire, old computer parts. A scrappers paradise. I am really enjoying dismantling all the old stuff he had. Making a good quid of money but it is hard work moving all that metal. So far, 8 metric tons of low grade steel, and I haven’t even counted all the lucrative metals yet.
Hey to5,
Some Old timer Dude In NZ gave me a 1 Florin coin dated 1946 King George 6 on the obverse kool Kiwi on the reverse..
Do you live “Down Under”?
They’ve been trying to stop making pennies for years but various Illinois lobbyists and politicians have fought it because it’s got Lincoln on it. As I recall they last came close but Obama scuttled it.
I don’t think Trump stopping it is part of the deeper cash-less push. Rounding up/down to the nickel and using the take-a-penny-leave-a-penny tray as a petty cash till to balance their cash drawers.
You have to remember that cash will always be around. It’s how politicians bribe each other and how most of their domestic help is paid under the table.
Oh, and yeah, there used to be smaller denominations. The U.S., as did many counties, had a halfpenny. Ours stopped in 1857. Britain I think once had a quater-penny that was aluminum.
It’s bad enough already. I tried to buy 1 gallon of gas the other day for $2.49&9/10ths but since I had no way to pay the 9/10ths of a cent, I had to pay $2.50! I wonder if I had bought 7 gallons, for which the price would have been $17.49&3/10ths, would they round it DOWN to $17.49?
Neighbor kid’s mom was a Bircher in the ‘60s. Soon as the news announced the “new” sandwich coins would be issued ‘65 and on she sent the three kids out door to door offering paper money for dimes, quarters, halfs and the occasional silver dollar. Most people were glad to make the exchange to get rid of that pesky heavy metal money. She had jars full of silver coins when the kid campaign was done.
I thought she was pretty frikin’ nuts at the time. Early genius was the truth. Also the only one later on with a big ‘WALLACE 68’ sign in the yard. Also called the school and raised hell when they sent us home with the “Trick or Treat for UNICEF” containers – “don’t you dare indoctrinate my kids with that Commie UN b.s.!”
Scarcity is what the temple priests and money changers crave. Fucking penny pinchers. Scarcity for us, abundance for them. It’s also their weakness. We should all begin withholding the gold, silver, copper, and any other such elements needed for their digital gulag. These things should be reserved for circulation amongst ourselves.
The other day my honey bunny and I went on a backroads trip through the Bloody Basin Wilderness area. The trip was with a group of people we’d never met, us being the youngest, put on by the local college. 42 miles through a prehistoric volcanic lava field that takes around 6-8 hours of drive time. Wonderful trip in the middle of Arizona not seen by many. Side hikes full of old ruins, year round springs, mineralized river beds, mountaintop 360 degree views, and vistas that shame human masterworks hanging on the walls of any museum.
Funny side note, at the end of the trip, the group sat down for dinner at a place along the Carefree highway. the poor server had to deal with eight separate checks/receipts, with a bevy of special requests. After the meal, as he handed out the checks, it was freaking hilarious watching the group. Every, Single, One of them, in unison, pens in hand, heads bowed, spectacles adjusted, faces close to the receipts trying to figure out the minimum tip as they put their credit cards down on the little trays. All of them trying to work out some difficult math problem, while talking about the ‘miles’ they were accumulating.
I did my usual, cash money, rounded up with a nice tip for the servers trouble, also scrawling, ‘no tax on tips’ in large case across the bottom. Watching from our seat at the end of the table, wife and I got a good laugh out of the whole thing and opined on how we wished we hadn’t left our cameras in the van. The younger people at the table next to ours noticed and shared a conspiratorial chuckle with us. As we left the restaurant, the server came up to us and thanked us for the cash. Of which BTW, if you aren’t using every chance you can, you have way too little hatred for the Garbage Elite.
Move the decimal point over one, that’s 10%. Now is a good time to round off. Call that X. Half of X plus X is 15%, or X+X is 20%. Decide which one of the 3 numbers you want to give them, if you want you can round off again (like if you calculate $14 but don’t have that many singles or just feel generous, make it $15).
This takes way longer to type out than it does to do.
You’re welcome.
Good on you for giving cash tips. Daughter used to wait tables in college, cash tip is immediate reward, on the card they wait for that tip to process.
When the service is at least decent I’m a big tipper. Also don’t scrimp on a tip for a cheap meal. My minimum is $5 per person, they’re on their feet all shift whether it’s a $10 snack plate or a $40 steak dinner.
Same here Sparkey. It doesn’t have to be exceptional service for me to give a 20-30%+ tip. Now, if it’s absolute shit service, waiter is surly, completely ignores us, forgets to refill our drinks or food is cold, then he is flirting with Zero.
Your party was Jewish, I take it.
I wonder if the Trump Derangement Syndrome is strong enough for the next Democrat controlled congress or president to bring back the penny. At least for a while.
A history lesson, there used to be a half cent piece. It was discontinued in 1857. That was when the the penny became the size it is today.
There is over 250 billion dollars in cents in circulation, unless the government recalls them?
They are not going away anytime soon.
I have been collecting them since 1972.
I have bought over 300 cars with spare change over the last 40 years.
It is really not spare change it is a method of savings and investing.
I have boxes of error coins that people pay Stupid amounts of money for, just to have in their collection.
As people age out of life; their kids have a tendency to pour the coins in a machine for 70% of face value.
I pull about 250 a month in coins, sort through them, segregate them, put them in ammo cans, stuff it in a safe, even the Zincs, because; I don’t want to see them again.
When I am gone; the boys have the work done for them; these are copper, bronze, zinc, uncirculated, rare mint mark, errors, etc.
ASSKICK Kool Dude,
Rock and Roll!
The discontinuing of the penny because it now costs 3 or 4 cents to make one penny should be an awakening to how inflation has destroyed our purchasing power. The devaluing of our dollar is being done by design.
Precisely so.
You don’t need pennies, when the dollar buys less than a penny once did.
And where that road leads, everyone will be a trillionaire, just like they were in Zimbabwe.
That trillion fiat bucks may even buy you an egg, if you’re lucky to find one for sale.
Our local Walmart has posted signs at checkouts that they’re no longer handing out pennies in change — and are ROUNDING UP to the nearest nickel. They’re keeping the pennies they’re no longer returning to you.
Imagine what this adds to their bottom line when done at scale across the fruited plain!
Paul Craig Roberts says it’s long past time to revert to Analog living:
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2025/11/13/tyranny-is-creeping-upon-us-and-we-dont-know-it/
I couldn’t agree more.
A company the size of Wal-Mart, yeah, they are going to cash in (literally) on keeping all those pennies.
One winter I was surfing Santa Barbara, and at Ledbetter beach parking lot, a fellow surfer who lived in a truck cab over camper which was falling apart from the salt in the air – so he used copper pennies as copper washers by drilling holes in them. I noticed his artful truck, and he told be a copper washer was 5 cents, and the penny only 1 cent.
It should be noted that gold going exponential coincides with the demise of the penny – yet long bonds are still only 5%. Something’s gotta break as they say. I have long stated that interest rates are going to soar past the 1980 highs.
https://i.imgur.com/y4apxWW.png
They also make a pretty darned good button for your clothes, just drill a couple holes. Buttons are amazingly expensive.
One thing to remember every time you use a credit card your behavior is tracked and noted. This allows actors, government and others, to invade your privacy with your explicit permission. My commie sister scorns me every time I make this point but it’s nevertheless true. Businesses that declare themselves cashless will not receive any reinforcement from me, but the market will eventually take care of this….it requires government coercion to implement a cashless society and such societies always perish. The problem for me is time…..the problem for our country is that the failure of this system will result in lots of pain, suffering and death. Notice in the pattern trends whiffs of soviet behavior…..well shit, ain’t I a ray of sunshine??
My experience has been service providers love cash. Generally speaking paying and tipping in cash results in better service. It’s all the same after tax income so why not make someone who is struggling to run a business happy. Costco…… Chevron, get no cash. Also, restaurants that force you use an app to order…..off the list. I’m noticing that trend seems to be fading.
You are correct. Honest actors in the market realize the same things you point out. My favorite restaurants charge extra for credit card transactions and I always pay cash for meals and especially tips….I encourage everybody to pay “cash” for tips….starve the pig as they say….
I was stationed at a USAF base in the UK, on base we didn’t use pennies, everything was rounded up/down to the nickel. Was never a problem.
The penny is gone because it costs too more to make than it is worth (apparently 4 cents). Stories on this never seem to touch on why the costs outstrip the value.
Why is the media complex not interested in informing the public that money has been created to the point of it being worthless? Sure, they will run stories about the cost of groceries or housing, but never seem to be able to turn their journalistic instincts to a root cause.
This is a side effect of the bigger plan. Make more money and give it to banks to distribute. Those who touch it first get the most value. Those people aren’t you and I. By the time we get it, prices have adjusted to the influx, and all we get is higher costs. Pay never seems to keep up with those costs though.
But at least when prices go up, even though we less things for them, govco can say. “Look, the economy is growing.”
It’s gaslighting by govco, Trump actually, to scream about how it’s “saving” money. This is an entity that invariably runs 3+ trillion annual deficits that are getting larger every second. How many pennies would foreign aid or bailouts to banksters like the one for Argentina buy? The fact is nothing matters and anything goes but no more penny for no reason other the nefarious ones mentioned by Eric regarding the “transition” to cashless.
Eric: “Well, now you cannot travel – by air – if you do not get REAL ID’d.”
Apparently you can use a passport as an alternative ID for travel and other requirements.
What you buy might well be innocuous but AI will be correlating everything so I would advise anyone who worries about this sort of stuff to stock up on whatever you feel might give GovCo a hissy fit if they knew you had it. Just saying.
While the death of the penny is not good apparently it costs 3.7 cents to make and they can claim to be stopping production because it’s uneconomical to produce. Which might even be true until you realize they p*ss away so much money on foreigner aid, wars and crony capitalism that it sounds like some kind of BS excuse to me.
With the geniuses we’ve got running the country for decades the dollar is worth less and less every year until it becomes worthless. Apparently the dollar has lost roughly 99% of it’s value since the (so called) Federal Reserve (Banker Cabal) was formed in 1913. So maybe you should look at stocking up your pantry and buying some precious metals.
The end of the penny is just the latest twist in a long effort to debase the dollar:
1861: Legal Tender Notes (aka fiat currency) issued.
1913: Federal Reserve Act and Federal Reserve Notes.
1933: No more gold coins and gold certificates, and bills no longer redeemable in gold.
1965: No more silver coins and silver certificates, and bills no longer redeemable in silver.
1966: No more United States Notes (issued by the Treasury and backed partially by gold/silver).
1969: No more bills larger than $100.
1971: No more gold standard.
1982: No more copper cents.
2025: no more common
centssense. 🙁9/11 was a watershed moment, which destroyed the very few constitutional restraints that remained after the New Deal. The government can to ANYTHING in the name of “anti-terrorism” — kill people anywhere around the globe without a declaration of war, detain them indefinitely without conviction at Guantanamo, waterboard and torture them, search any traveler at any time without a warrant, surveil them without probable cause, track all phone connections, seize cash without filing criminal charges, etc. etc.
It’s not hyperbole to say that we live in the Soviet Union — but with football, porn, and beer.
Madison and Jefferson are rolling in their graves.
‘It’s not hyperbole to say that we live in the Soviet Union — but with football, porn and beer.’ — X
And without those stunning Russian women, who apparently all flocked to Dubai instead of the pokey old United States. 🙁
This ad turned up in my email yesterday:
https://postimg.cc/Yj2tJn1r
In my haste, I misread it as ‘slave girls.’ But it was that pseudo-English tagline, ‘Best place to meet real woman’ that sealed the deal.
Natasha, fetch me another cuppa, love.
Fucking Awesome…on the MONEY!
I’m a retired CPA and…I approve this message!
Hi X.
I watched a YouTube video from a Soviet ex-pat who pointed out that at least in the Soviet Union the bread you bought in the stores was very high quality and he was shocked at how bad American bread was in comparison.
I call BS on it.
Many Soviet ex-pats love to wax on about how wonderful things were back in the day. And now they shit on America while never telling us why they are here and not going back to that paradise. Part of Russian mentality.
Of course, anything is better than Wonder bread. All one has to do is stop being a cheapo and buy good or even artisan bread instead.
And, when was the last time you saw a $500 bill? Or, a $1000?
These denominations were done away with because they “were not being uses”. However, if you bring it up now, when inflation has made them useful, we’re told it’s not done because it would help “drug pushers”. Which is true, Big Pharma only deals in digital.
‘It will become inconvenient to use cash.’ — eric
Or costlier. A couple of credit cards I have offer rebates of 1.5% (on everything) and 3.0% (certain categories or merchants). Moreover, both offered a $100 to $200 bonus for signing up and making some initial purchases.
Why does this make business sense for the card issuers? Evidently, MasterCard and VISA have a profitable little duopoly going, extracting much higher transaction fees from merchants than their service actually costs. Reportedly, they’re in talks to cut those fees by a whopping 0.1% — the equivalent of a tuxedo-clad Mark Zuckerberg ostentatiously dropping a penny in a beggar’s tin cup.
While I don’t want to participate in undermining the role of cash, at the same time it’s hard to pass up a 3% discount on groceries from the credit card duopolists, as they refund part of their transaction fee shakedown.
The nickel’s days are numbered too. They have 6 cents of metal in them.
And don’t even think about melting down nickels to extract that arbitrage — it’s a federal crime.
I, too, respect the sanctity of our national currency. /sarc
I always wondered if the scene in “Escape from Alcatraz” where the Clint Eastwood character welds a nail clipper part to a spoon handle by using a dime was viable.
Back then a dime was made mostly out of silver. Today its copper cladded with nickel. Hence, money was worth more when Frank Morris & the Anglin brothers were leaving the Rock. The same dime is probably a $1+ nowadays.
coinflation.com will tell you the metal value of US and some Canadian coins.
That Mercury dime has $3.68 worth of 90% silver and 10% copper in it as of today. Very few people grasp the true nature of the debasement since the communist takeover of 1913. The paper dollar is worth about what the 1913 penny was.
Funny too, before the Lincoln penny, American money had symbols of liberty on it, after that it had pictures of dead presidents, and lately femmunists, a form of secular idolatry.
Ancient coinage had rulers pictures on it as a form of guarantee. As in,” I, Caesar Augustus, decree that this coin is a measure of honest weight and value. This is my sign that it is so”. Which is also the origin of the crimes of debasement and counterfeiting, they were punishable by destitution and death because they were usurping the emperors authority and impugning his honor.
The constitution gave the congress the power to coin money and regulate its value. They had no authority giving it to the feral reserve.
How very far we have fallen.
And a “$20 gold piece” has more than $4000 worth of 90 percent gold and 10 percent silver and copper. So when you hear that average wages in the 19th century were around $20-30 per month, that’s like $4000-6000 per month.
Remember too that $20 didn’t have $10 taxed away with income and so-called security taxes. And prices were cheaper without legions of corporate suits sticking their fangs in and inflating prices. So conservatively that $20/ month in gold circa 1900 was buying a $10000/ month lifestyle in 2025. People (at least in America, not in the cities) had huge families and big houses.
I Love my pre 1933 Double saw buck
Liberty and St. Gaudens coins…..paid 1,626+premium..$249 thus 1875 per….coin … face value is $20.00….Hmmm??
Ahem…The pre 1933 USA gold coins are 96.75 % gold by Troy oz…
To be clear, it is completely unnecessary to melt it or ship it out of the empire to be melted, just save it for a while. I’ve been hoarding pennys and nickels for decades, since both are the only honest American currency worth its weight or more.
Even the modern zinc penny is worth more in metal than its face value. And it’s a cheap, harmless hobby, and walls of shelves lined with peanut nutter jars full of Pennie’s and nickels look really cool.
Sounds Super Kool Big E,
I’m always checking for pre 1964 coinage to dump into my stash.
It’s called “Junk Silver”…at approximately 90% silver they are heavy as shit compared to “oro puro” but hey.. they add up.
> And don’t even think about melting down nickels to extract that arbitrage — it’s a federal crime.
Likewise with pre-1982 pennies, which are now worth over 3¢ each. $1.46 in those pennies (just shy of three tubes) is a pound of 97% (IIRC) copper, and a pound of copper is closing in on $5.
A while back, I was buying tubes of pennies from the bank, sorting out the copper pennies, and rolling and returning the copper-clad zinc pennies afterward. I used a scale and my eyes at first (copper pennies weigh 3.1 g each, vs. 2.5 g for copper-clad), but eventually switched to using a vending-machine coin acceptor to speed up the process. It was a bit of a crap shoot as to what you’d get. If the bank had recently gotten a load of pennies from someone who’d rolled the contents of a piggy bank or some other such stash, you could get a relatively high percentage of copper coins. Occasionally, though, I’d get a bunch of mint-fresh clad pennies that would all need to be returned.
Someone else has already brought up pre-1965 silver coinage: dimes are worth $3.79, quarters are worth $9.48, and half-dollars are worth $18.96. The melt value of just one quarter is approaching the face value ($10) of a tube, and dimes ($5 for a tube) are also closing in. A tube of half-dollars is only $10 face value (20 halves, vs. 40 quarters or 50 dimes), so that ship has long since sailed.
There’s also gold, which was used for coinage until 1933. I don’t have any of these, but I have a few foreign coins of equivalent weight, such as Mexican 10-peso coin from the ’50s. It’s about the same size and weight as our $5 coins used to be. I just checked my inventory spreadsheet, and a coin that would’ve had a $5 face value this side of the border is now worth just over $1000. I paid half as much for it just five years ago.
I have a set of 19th century and 20th century gold eagles. I’ve seen them selling for around $15K.