SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX<\/a><\/p>\nLegislation has been introduced in the House to help ease the transition by codifying guidelines for businesses, but the bill has yet to be voted on. The Common Cents Act was introduced in April by Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) and is eligible for House consideration within the next few months.<\/p>\n
The law would \u201cprovide the guidance and regulations needed to help stores, banks, and consumers make a smooth transition while modernizing our currency policy,\u201d McClain told Capital News Service in a statement.<\/p>\n
Canada implemented similar rounding recommendations after discontinuing its penny in 2012, also maintaining the coin as legal tender despite halting production.<\/p>\n
Among the 21 countries in the European Union sharing the euro as the common currency, the minting of one-cent coins (and two-cent coins) has been discontinued in eight nations: Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Slovakia.<\/p>\n
Getting rid of pennies or their equivalents has been a global trend.<\/p>\n
Australia hasn\u2019t had one-cent and two-cent coins since 1992. New Zealand jettisoned both coins in 1990. Mexico stopped minting the one-centavo coin in 1992. South Africa ended one-cent and two-cent coin production in 2002. Brazil said farewell to its one-centavo coin in 2005.<\/p>\n
The United Kingdom, meanwhile, hasn\u2019t given up yet on its one-pence coins.<\/p>\n
Impact on local businesses<\/p>\n
Maryland Local Businesses, an organization supporting small businesses across the state, maintains that the end of the penny will have minimal impact on owner and customer experiences.<\/p>\n
\u201cConsumer transactions are predominantly credit card-driven \u2026 so they can still price things that way,\u201d said Connor Edwards, marketing director of Maryland Local Businesses.<\/p>\n
Cindy Calhoun, owner of a Washington-area souvenir penny machine company, known to collectors as \u201celongateds,\u201d is not very concerned about the impact on her business.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs with all things, we learn to adapt to changes and I expect the hobby of collecting elongateds will continue to grow and adapt,\u201d Calhoun told CNS in a statement. She theorizes that many machines will transition to pre-loaded blank copper, or convert to stamping dimes or quarters.<\/p>\n
Others, however, are more skeptical about the policy\u2019s implementation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way the U.S. went about it was thoughtless and without consideration,\u201d said Chris Russotti, a Virginia coin collector. \u201cThe government did not pass any legislation or provide any guidance for how to handle transactions going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
A group of national trade associations wrote to congressional finance committees in September about the lack of federal guidance.<\/p>\n
Stores across the country are hoping for guidelines on rounding, handling Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) purchases and check-cashing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf these remedies are not addressed in short order, it will be challenging to legally engage in cash transactions with customers in growing swaths of the country,\u201d the letter warned.<\/p>\n
Impact on penny\u2019s value<\/p>\n
\u201cI do not think the value of the penny will rise\u201d among collectors, Russotti said, citing the massive supply of coins already available.<\/p>\n
Edward Van Wesep, a professor at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder, shares this opinion.<\/p>\n
\u201cI doubt that they will ever be worth anything more than a penny, and the value of a penny goes down every day due to inflation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
However, some collectors mourn the penny\u2019s demise.<\/p>\n
\u201cI enjoyed buying boxes to go through,\u201d Russotti said. \u201cI\u2019m saddened that I can no longer buy them from a bank.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a strange feeling after well over 200 years for it to be over,\u201d said \u201cTwosheds\u201d Gabbard, a Louisville, Kentucky, collector.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Capital News Service is a student-staffed reporting service operated by the University of Maryland\u2019s Phillip Merrill College of Journalism. Stories are available at the CNS site<\/a> and may be reprinted as long as credit is given to Capital News Service and, most importantly, to the students who produced the work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. Mint ceased production of the penny on Nov. 12, although experts expect the coin still will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72,92325,92330,92329,969,176,61,60,92328,92326,174,175,92327,7914,83019],"class_list":{"0":"post-166212","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-capital-news-service","10":"tag-cash-transactions","11":"tag-chris-russotti","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-finance","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-lisa-mcclain","17":"tag-national-association-of-convenience-stores","18":"tag-personal-finance","19":"tag-personalfinance","20":"tag-production-factors","21":"tag-scott-bessent","22":"tag-u-s-mint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}