Pennies

[cosmolinguist]

Pennies are odd things.

They serve as a tangible reminder of a time when such coinage was worth something. This is not that time. Pennies' continued existence bothers some people to the point that they talk about abolishing them. Before 1982, pennies were 95% copper and 5% zinc, but then the compostion changed to 97.6% zinc, and 2.4% copper, because it's cheaper (allowing us to do a "hollow out the penny" experiment in high-school chemistry).

Silver coins are at least respectable and can be used to do your laundry, get stuff from a vending machine, or buy a bus ticket. But purchasing even a pint of milk would require a substatial quantity of pennies, and might easily cause a substantial amount of annoyance to the cashier or a similar amount of embarrassment in the customer.

Some people have a receptacle to toss their pennies in. Some just leave them around the house, to blend with the rest of the garbage (indeed; when I helped Jenn clean her dorm room so she could move out of it, she just threw away the change she found, figuring it wasn't worth the effort of putting it aside to keep). I used to keep mine in a jar and take it to the bank when it got full, to get it out of my sight as much as to collect my monetary reward. Andrew's always had a pint-glass full of coppers, the overflow just sort of, well, flows around the rest of the house.

I suggested this crazy take-them-to-the-bank scheme of mine, and he explained that they'd have to be separateed into the 1p coins and the 2p coins. I considered that yet another reason to think the 2p coins are silly. I realise there was a time when two pence was substantially more money than one penny, but Britain doesn't have the excuse of "it's always been like that" here; they just decimalised their system in the early seventies (before that there were shillings and farthings and the abbreviation for "pence" was "d," and all kinds of confusing things like that).

Then I forgot about the pennies for a long time. Then today I realized again how overrun the house has become, and, lacking anything better to do while Andrew's at his uncle's, I decided to separate them. It's not the sort of task I'd like to do every day, but it only took me a few minutes and gave me the satisfaction of feeling like I was staving off entropy a bit.

(Crosslink: rhodri explains London telephone numbers.)

Comments

[ladytabitha.livejournal.com]

I'd have to look this up, but apparently in NZ or Australia, they don't use pennies.  They round up or down, depending.  There was a study done, and it turns out it all averages out by the end of the day.

[hephaestos.livejournal.com]

They're mainly good for sales tax tokens.

Britain may abolish the penny for all I know (I'm not sure what kind of sentimentality is attached to it, it's certainly not as big (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English/British_coin_Penny) as it used to be). It won't happen in the U.S. for a good long while now though; Illinois has a substantial lobby to keep it in circulation, because of Lincoln's portrait. Illinois even has its toll booths tooled to take pennies.

I never got to do that experiment myself, having graduated from high school in '79. :( Maybe I'll set something up in the basement.

[cosmolinguist]

It is kind of cool; you get to play with acid. And the penny is just s shell at the end.

[j4.livejournal.com]

[I hope you don't mind me following up to your posts -- you just seem to keep posting about things I feel like talking about! Will go away if I'm being a pain. Anyway...]

There's a machine in Sainsburys where you can pour your loose change in and it will separate it for you & work out how much it is. I think you can convert the money into savings stamps or something, can't remember, never really looked very closely. It does, however, cost money to use the machine, i.e. they take a small percentage of the money you pour in. If this was something you wanted to do frequently, you could invest in a coin sorter (http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/COISOR.htm) of your own, which would have the added advantage of being a Neat Thing to have. 8-)

I have to say that when I was a kid (eee, I remember when it was all fields round here) 2p was substantially more than 1p -- you could get four ha'penny sweets as opposed to two. That made a difference! No, we didn't really have ha'pennies -- this was the late 1980s! -- but that's what we called the two-for-a-penny sweets.

Until quite recently (last couple of years?) you could still use coppers in drinks machines, which was sometimes handy -- I used to occasionally find that the handful of shrapnel in my wallet was just enough for that desperately-needed mid-afternoon chocolate bar at work... These days I just use the coppers to get closer to the exact price in shops, e.g. if something costs 49p I often have the change to do that exactly. I suspect, actually, that this kind of pricing is the real reason we still "need" the little money -- so that retailers can continue to try to play the psychological trick on people that allegedly convinces them that "£9.99" is a bargain whereas "ten pounds" is a lot of money.

[cosmolinguist]

I hope you don't mind me following up to your posts

I certainly don't mind. There are LJ users who value quantity of comments over anything; I'm not one of those. I don't even value quantity over quality. And your comments are always quality, whatever the quantity.

-- you just seem to keep posting about things I feel like talking about!

I'm glad to hear that.

I told Andrew about the coin-sorting machine, in the context of it being what happens to my change when it's taken to the bank. I seem to remember my grandpa having an old version of the same kind of machine; it was probably given to him by one of his vapid daughters for Christmas or something. I didn't know they had them in Sainsburys, but then we're rarely in Sainsburys (the last time we were near there, for instance, we ended up not buying anything because they didn't have the kind of ice cream Andrew wanted, so we went to Tesco instead). It seems a kind of cool idea, potentially good for both the customer and the store.

I seem to remember seeing, on some sitcom (Seinfeld, maybe?) one of the characters explaining to another his latest great idea: the 99-cent coin. He thought this was a great way to get around retailers making everything for $9.99, or whatever. The character he was talking to (if it even was a "he") said, "but what about sales tax?", at which point the first guy said, "that's what [some other chatacter] said too ..." and everyone laughed and this made a good joke. But that argument coulldn't be used in Britain, where the things that say £9.99 actually cost you £9.99. :-)

[cosmolinguist]

Andrew just told me, "We've never been to Sainsburys."

"What?"

"We've never been to Sainsburys!"

Then I remembered this. "Ohhhh! ... Haven't we?" I added, grinning. He couldn't see the grin.

"No."

"Not even in Piccadilly?"

Long pause.

This time, it was his turn to say, "Ohhhh!" He tried to defend himself by saying, "That's not a proper one, though." And it's true, it isn't. It's just the one in the train station. But still; for once it's nice to know and remember something that he didn't. Mwa ha ha!

[dawgdays.livejournal.com]

Want a 1/2p coin? I have a few. Talk about useless.

[draconid.livejournal.com]

Pennies did actually exist when shillings and farthings were around (hence the bike called "penny farthing" so it still is an excuse to some extent (I think the shilling actually because the 5p piece, despite their being 6 pennies in a shilling). But yes, they do seem useless now, except for the fact that when including VAT, people like to have prices that add up to x.99. So without them you'd be saying "keep the change" all the time.

We keep an old sweet tub (with a slot cut into the top) for our coppers. Every so often we gather them up and I take them to my bank (and hope that Rat doesn't remember and ask for his share). I actually enjoy splitting the 2ps and 1ps up (you do, afterall, have to count a quids worth) - but then I'm a little crazy like that!

[dawgdays.livejournal.com]

There were 12d in a shilling. And yes, the shilling turned into the 5p piece, and the florin (2 shillings) turned into the 10p.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

The problem with eliminating pennies is that it just seems silly to have the lowest denomination of something start with a 5.

If you were to eliminate pennies, they should make 'new cents' and repress the nickles with 1s the dimes with 2s and the quarters with 20s.

Whoops, there goes decimilization again.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

Explains London telephone numbers poorly.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

Yawn. If you'd like to give your own highly confused and illogical alternative, I'd be happy to rip it to tiny shreds. Or maybe you just like trolling slightly drunk men after work to send them into spasms of fury. Whichever.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

Simple. 7 digits just like it's traditionally been. Area codes that are either 0208 or 0207. Not very confused at all.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

Please listen, before one of us dies.

"Like it's traditionally been" is just bollocks. The system has to expand to cope with demand. UK telephone numbers all used to be a 3 digit code followed by a 4 digit number. A few more people fancied having a phone. The system had to change.

0208 is not a code. It just isn't. I've tried telling you to make a trip to London and attempt to dial a 7 digit number, you've ignored me. It WON'T WORK. Your ingenious idea of continually adding area codes every few years until we all have to carry around a piece of paper to remind us of them all is just ludicrous. We have 8 digit phone numbers in London now. It works. We won't need to add area codes for decades, if ever. But people are too f*cking stupid to realise it.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

Hey, if it makes you happy to think that a numerical designation that is based on geography and area isn't an area code, go right ahead. I'm not really bothered.

But for the rest of the country (and most people I know in London), 0207 and 0208 are area codes. Deal with it.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

You are a fuckwit who ignores the evidence presented in front of their fucking eyes. (http://www.ofcom.org.uk/licensing_numbering/numbers/num_user_guide?a=87101#1) Now, just deal with it.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

You're fun!

Good for you.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

I'm NOT fun, no, I'm a bitter, twisted man in his mid 30s who would fail any debating class on account of getting really fucking angry with people who couldn't understand his point of view. I need to go and have a lie down. Apologies.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

No worries. These things happen.

I used to be bitter and twisted, but then I realized that I just don't care enough anymore. Makes life much more livable that way, really.

Hope you feel better soon.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

That's really, awfully sweet of you. Now, please leave it alone on my journal, now, there's a pet, because we have nothing further to say to each other on this subject.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. You stop responding to me about it, I'll stop responding to you.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

Well, if you're going to get all chicken and egg on me, we're in trouble, aren't we. And I'll lose eventually in any case, because I'll need staggering amounts of beauty sleep in approximately 3 hours time, but you're still mid-afternoon.

And tomorrow's another day.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

Tomorrow's another day, but it will probably suck as well. ;)

I was never really one for sleep though.

Hmm, I might have to add you.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

I'll be sure screen any posts from you that talk about anything vaguely numerical.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

I'll have to be subtle about it then.