show the other side of the penny.....double dawg dare ya....just teasing..

1954-D.

I think. I can't read things that small any more...

Wait for the new Mt. Hood quarter, due out this Fall. http://coins.coinupdate.com/mount-hood-national-forest-quarter/

I still get a wheat penny a few times a year. What's really rare nowadays is the Indian head cent. I got a 1902 in decent condition about ten years ago that I still have, but I haven't run across one since.

Why do we have to keep retooling for endless new quarter designs? This has got to be costing us (wait for it) a mint and seems like really bad timing, given the economic downturn.

S.C. pol wants to ban U.S. currency, © 2010 United Press International, Feb. 17, 2010.

COLUMBIA, S.C., Feb. 17 (UPI) -- A lawmaker who introduced a bill to ... ban what Pitts called "the unconstitutional substitution of Federal Reserve Notes for silver and gold coin" in his state, The Palmetto Scoop reported Wednesday. Pitts said the idea is to allow South Carolina to "function through gold and silver coinage" and allow the state to have a "base of currency" if the U.S. economy collapses.

Legal experts doubt the ....

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what about copper?

I have 3 or 4 gallons of pennies I've save over 25 years.

Probably some special ones in there.

Who wants to go through them all for me?

No liberals, you can be trusted.

Oh come on, I was just kidding.
About the liberal.
I have the pennies.

I'd love to do it, if you'd let me blog about it.

Why do we have to keep retooling for endless new quarter designs? This has got to be costing us (wait for it) a mint and seems like really bad timing, given the economic downturn.

From what I hear, the U.S. Mint actually makes a profit when they sell coins to banks, except for pennies.

Don't ask me how it works...

That said, given the devaluation of the Dollar, I wonder why we even have pennies, nickels, or dimes.

Wait for the new Mt. Hood quarter, due out this Fall.
Exactly when and why did the US Treasury turn into the Franklin Mint?

You know what hurts counterfeiting efforts? Not knowing what money is really supposed to look like.

I can't imagine it's worth it to try to counterfeit coins. It's a nuisance having to look carefully at what the clerk just gave you, though. They've even screwed around with the back of the penny.

I assume it's all to capture the collector market, which pays good dough for new coin sets from the Mint.

No really, please show us the other side. Heades I win, tails you lose!

Back when cents (they're not "pennies"--those are British) were actually made of copper.

Nothing like debasing a currency to bring economic ruin. Worked for Rome. Not.

From what I hear, the U.S. Mint actually makes a profit when they sell coins to banks, except for pennies.

True, the way the bookkeeping works the Mint takes to its top line the entire value of coins as they are distributed. But it's not like any value is created; it's pure monetary inflation. Government accounting works wonderfully well, if you are the Government. Sadly, the Social Security and Medicare trust funds have just about as much substance behind them.

By the way, I loved filling those blue Whitman folders back in the day, going through change for Mercury dimes and Buffalo nickels. And on occasion an Indian Head, steel (war time) or 1909 penny (alas no S-VDB) would show up. Annual mintage quantities were my first empirical introduction to economic cycles.

When coinage was debased in 1964 the rare and interesting coins were sucked out the system for bullion value. The smart money melted them down when the Hunt brothers were in their ascendancy.

A work colleague picks up dropped change while walking during lunch each day along rows of parking meters. When he returns with foreign coins we massage our gray matter and hone our research skills by competing to identify country of origin.

"I'd love to do it, if you'd let me blog about it."

Ok, when do I drop them off.

With so many I always figured the odds are there has to be some realy rare ones?

Jack - When you go through Ben's cents, put all the pre-'82 ones in a separate pile. They are 95% copper, & already worth about 2 cents for the metal (but it's currently illegal to melt them, I believe.) 1983 and after are mostly zinc, with a copper wash - it will be interesting to see if Abe's nose starts to turn silvery as the coins wear, but I don't think it's happened much yet. (This happened to one of the Kings George way back, & was embarrassing.) If you are really thorough, put the 1982s in another pile & weigh them - some were copper that year, & weigh 3.11 grams, the rest were the current scrap metal, and weigh 2.5 g. The nickel is the only other current coin that has a melt value almost equal to its face value - survivalists are hoarding them for the Big Crash. Everything else costs the Mint much less to make than face value, & the plethora of varieties results from the notion that the Mint makes the profit, and the inflationary effect (small though it be) is neutralized by the fact that many are taken out of circulation by collectors. Happy Hunting. (Learn the various die irregularities if you want to be a full-service examiner!)

I have a friend who owns a sporting goods store. They price everything to an even fifty cents so the only coins they have to keep in the till are quarters. Makes life much simpler for them.

Now, if you really want to have fun, you could spend all day going over the science of US coinage and bills. I'm not just talking about anti-counterfeiting efforts. I'm talking about how, in the effort to make a new dollar coin that could be used in vending machines that already accepted Susan B. Anthony dollars, we came very close to ending up with a pink coin instead of a gold one. (The alloy used is a proprietary magnesium alloy, and the Mint spent almost a decade trying to come up with a mix with the proper electrical conductivity and the right color.)