it makes cents

well, this last week we said good-bye to the penny…

…which economically makes sense.

after two hundred and thirty two years the u.s. mint has ceased production of the penny, which is worth ONE cent but costs almost four cents each to make.

so do we now need to round? i know one business which is already starting to, which is a little ridiculous because there are still 250,000,000,000 (a quarter of a TRILLION) pennies still currently in circulation, as well as laying in parking spaces, driveways, fountains, etc…but of the 165 federal mint distribution points 100 of them are, quite literally, penniless.

shane and i once worked a show in san antonio where we ran out of quarters. they thought we’d walk up a couple of hundred people, but we instead walked up just over 2,500. tickets were $15.50 and they gave us ONE roll of quarters ($10) for the day. i bought a few more from the taco tent, etc, but we were ass out of coins two hours into an eight hour day, so we just rounded and kept track of the over/under in our head. at the end of the day we balanced to the penny. this isn’t nearly as tragic as it’s made out to be.

shit, in my current gig with the tattoo supply company i don’t carry coins at all and just round off the half – if it’s .51 and up i round up. if it’s .49 or less i round down. i haven’t had it hit the even half in over a year of working there, but i’ll probably just go off if they’re cool or not when it does.

but like i said, with a quarter of a trillion of the lil’ fuckers still out there, i guess it’s just a matter of time, but it ain’t a short amount of time. you might, however, need to step up the timeline of some house projects if you are so inclined…