Thursday, December 20, 2012

A Desperate US Mint Testing New Metals to Make Coins Cheaper to Mint

The Federal Reserve has so debased the value of the dollar that it is now very expensive for the U.S. Mint to buy buy and use copper, nickel and zinc in the coins it produces. Currently, a penny costs more than two cents and a nickel costs more than 11 cents to make and distribute.

The AP reports that a 400-page report presented last week to Congress outlines nearly two years of trials conducted at the Mint in Philadelphia, where a variety of metal recipes were put through their paces in the massive facility's high-speed coin-making machinery. But the Mint couldn't find any good replacements

Evaluations of 29 different alloys concluded that none met the ideal list of attributes, according to AP. The Treasury Department concluded that additional study was needed before it could endorse any changes.

This may be a corollary to Gresham's Law, aggressive government paper money printing drives governments out of the metal minting business.

5 comments:

  1. lmao @ the irony of "zinc" being too expensive now! (especially in the context of why it was chosen in the first place)

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  2. Could this be one of the arguments used to justify a "cashless" society? Beware!

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  3. Have they looked into bubble-gum? Or is that too expensive?

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  4. And even canceling the penny isn't cheap according to Canada...

    http://business.financialpost.com/2012/12/19/demise-of-canadas-one-cent-coin-to-cost-taxpayers-a-pretty-penny/

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  5. But I thought inflation was de minimis. How can the metal be costing more if there's such little inflation?

    Or ... maybe, the lie?

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