'Why do teenagers throw pennies in the bin?' blog discussion

pinetree

Hi All Take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves

TeamMCS

To be honest I've thrown old coppers away. I used to diligently save each penny but I just end up with tons of useless copper which is a major pain in the backside to convert to a larger sum.

An entire pot of pennies will be worth, what? ten pounds? My time to cash them in will be worth a lot more than that. I hate to say it but it's simple economics here.

While the teens maybe throwing them away from the wrong reasons, it isn't entirely unjustified.

Quite honestly, if a charity wanted to collect my coins in the same way they do with clothes then they're welcome to my pots of damn copper. At the moment they're serving as an excellent door stop.

AHAR

JezR wrote: »

1p and 2p coins should be withdrawn and Swedish rounding adopted on a 5p interval. Discuss

Has been discussed!

kitrat

I can distantly remember being embarrassed of collecting pennies from my change when I was a teenager, not enough to act on it though. i have no idea why.

When I was working as a shop assistant at a stationery shop a couple of years ago a teenage boy told me to 'keep the change', I couldn't believe it! It's was 6p which frankly just made my life more difficult since there was no charity pot nearby and I didn't want to ruin the balance of the till and of course I wasn't going to pocket it. I was almost offended as if I was supposed to be flattered or something that I could keep the change. It's ridiculous!

SINBAD_2

.....because they're not worth anything to a teenager. I often find several coppers on the floor in classrooms I teach in around school. Why keep a coin that throughout your whole life has never been able to purchase something? Let's make life easier and get rid of coins under 10p, New Zealand did a similar thing a few years ago. Life's too short......

corbyboy

SINBAD wrote: »

.....because they're not worth anything to a teenager. I often find several coppers on the floor in classrooms I teach in around school. Why keep a coin that throughout your whole life has never been able to purchase something? Let's make life easier and get rid of coins under 10p, New Zealand did a similar thing a few years ago. Life's too
short......

So what happens when you pay for something that costs 95p with a £1 couin?

Middy

There is a customer that buys his fags at £6.25 each day. He always has £6.50 or £7.00 to give and asks us to keep the change - which goes to charity. Presume in a week, that adds to £3-4. In a year, that is around £200!

Stryder

What a bizarre article. Really? Only teenager do this? Only teenagers throw away pennies?

The teenagers around me mostly use "shrapnel" in the form of copper coins to sling at people, not a bin. Many people do not care about coins to the extent that buskers and charity collectors have be known to scowl at the offering of coppers. And I have a pennies jar which takes anything up to £1 coins - and after 2 years I have about £3 in coppers. in some stores this buys only 4 packets of crisps (not supermarkets to be fair, but high street stores and cafes).
Remember the days when crisps cost 15p and the space raiders were about 5 p - then it was worth collecting. now - I have to say - probably best to round up to 5p if there was an economic benefit - which there may be in terms of cost of minting etc. Mind you I love the 2p fruit machines on Llandudno pier!!!!

still - can we have less sensational titles "look at what these layabout, teenage hoodie wearing, bike riding, soft drink drinking, school going, layabouts are doing with our money"!

On another note if coins are being disposed of then then increases the value of the pound, and actually makes British industry less competitive internationally. Now it would be interesting to know the cost of lost/destroyed money in terms of the economy and inflation ... bloody teenagers!

luxor4t

Almost £10 worth of 'discarded cash' picked up so far this year - and good exercise!
It goes towards the town's Mr X Christmas charity btw.

zerog

I pick up pennies and chuck them into Tesco self-checkouts. Then pay the balance with a card.
But sometimes if I don't see coppers until I walk past, it's not worth it to stop and turn back. It would be worth it for a 5p or more.

The royal mint thinks there are £3.5 billion worth of coins in circulation. Let's say that 25 million people (about half of the population of England) keep their change in a jar which they never touch, and the rest are like me and spend every coin they get. That's probably an underestimate, as I've seen jars of change in every house and office that I've been to.

If the average amount in a jar is £20, that's half a billion pounds sitting around that will never be spent and might as well be in the bin.

I don't think 1p coins cost more than a penny to make currently, although they did when the price of copper was higher. So this means that anyone throwing them away is helping the government. Because having a penny just means that the government owes you a penny. By throwing it away, you're forgiving the government's debt to you. If the metal was worth more than 1p, then you would be stealing from the government if you threw them away.

pseeker wrote:

Btw, did you know that any £1 combination of penny coins you use, it will always add up to 356 grams? clever design

Not really that clever - it's only because the 2p coin weighs the same as two 1p coins. If the 1p weighed 1g and the 2p weighed 2g, then £1 of coppers would always weigh 100g.