To think 1p and 2p pieces need to be taken out of circulation

[VintageEbonyGold]

Just that, they're almost useless and the banks get hoiky judgy pants if you take in more than £5 worth.

What's with that anyway, you spend months digging the buggers out of the sofa, then months counting them out into the correct piles and then some one spoils all the fun of watching them all being weighed by moaning about it.

Sods.

Ivana
AUS 2c is currently worth more than 1p, and when it was abolished 20 years ago its value was considerably more in terms of buying power
Shops cannot change prices to their advantages unless only single items are ever bought-see explaination above

What would I do if I wanted to buy a Blackjack?

they are 5p now love, eee how times have changed

YANBU. Get rid of 1s and 2s.

A bit off topic but I get disproportionally excited by a cash machine that gives out fivers! I love to take out 15 or 25

Rounding to nearest 5 obviously works in other countries - but - in the UK, how would it work for e.g. penny sweets ? You wouldn't get first two free (or kids would always pick up 2 every time they went into a shop). So, would you only be able to buy in bags of 5. Another question - if I've got a trolley full of stuff coming to, say, £100: couldn't I arrange it as a number of different transactions, each of which ends with 7 (so rounding down).

Last part might not be a problem - HecateHarshPants earlier made the very good point that if the price for cash was higher than the price when paying by card, the poor would tend to be paying more. However, if people could save a small amount by taking 5 minutes to arrange their shopping into sets ending in 7, this would - you'd expect - tend to be taken advantage of by people with less money.

1p and 2p coins already cost much more to produce than their face value, and their scrap metal value will be higher than their face value sooner or later.

When it becomes financially better for charities (or Mrsjays family) to sell their coin stashes for scrap metal(cant be far off now) should we keep on producing new ones?
Or will TiggyD have to forego her Blackjack? (sorry Tiggy)

A bit off topic but I get disproportionally excited by a cash machine that gives out fivers! I love to take out 15 or 25

In the dark ages you used to be able to take out fivers I remember my first wage and i took a fiver out I didn't realise you could again is it all autotellers that do it , >>> off to take 15 quid out

They wouldn't need to be fixing prices. If pennies went, they'd simply price everything in increments of 5. No rounding needed.

I say do away with them. Then there will be a time limit for people to cash in their coppers before they become worthless. I reckon that every household in the country must have an average of at least £1 in coppers lying around. That would be millions of pounds suddenly back in circulation. What would that do to the economy

itsstillgood
I have never seen anyone doing what you suggest in all the happy hours of my life I have wasted in queues at supermarket checkouts etc in 25 years in Aus.

If it became a problem they could make a ruling that you had to go back to the back of the queue for a separate purchase, but I really cannot imagine anyone going to so much bother for the sake of 2p.

And the days of children buying single sweets for a penny must sadly be numbered anyway, how can it be even worth the wages of the person serving them?

The reason shops sell things at a couple of pennies off a round number is so they look significantly lower (£4.97 instead of £5.00 apparently making a much bigger difference to consumer spending than £5.00 instead £5.03). Similarly you see a lot more things ending in 80 - 99 pence than you do ending in 1 - 20 pence. So there would still be pressure on retailers to keep their prices below the whole pound, i.e. £4.95 instead of £5.00.

And we did this 30 years ago with the halfpenny. Surely it wouldn't be hard to see whether that did actually raise prices?

5p for a Blackjack!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

5p for a Blackjack!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Travesty innit

I used to do the whole penny sweet serving thing. (Youth club). Worked fine when children had 20p pocket money. Then there came a time when children would ask for £1 worth. Just wasn't worth doing it.

The reason banks can only accept a limited number of bags at a time is for storage/insurance. Most high st banks don't have huge vaults anymore just small secure safes so they're therefore limited to what they can accept.. If everyone brought in 30bags of coppers everyday they'd be overun! Banks don't actually have millions of pounds behind the glass, a few grand is all!

Madonnakebab Thanks - I wondered if it was an issue in Australia. I think the Australian cent is worth a bit less than a British penny so the effect in UK would be equivalent to roughly 3 Australian cents (per set) - so maybe more likely to be an issue here (without even thinking about possibly different wealth/attitudes to money in the two countries).

Also, the assumption that the cost of transaction will be as likely to be rounded up as down looks dodgy - if newspapers decided to charge prices ending in 8, say, a large number of a newsagent's transactions (namely, from people buying a paper only) would also end in 8 giving the newsagent a windfall of a few percent of the price (or, to see it the other way, people being charged a few percent more than the underlying price).

I tend to agree, though interesting point about rounding up/down etc.

I put them in the Coinstar machines at the supermarket - yes there's a charge, but at least you're getting rid of them! Don't think I could be bothered sorting and taking them to the bank.

The rounding is simple, if your bill is $9.97, you pay $9.95, if it is $9.98 you pay $10. Thats the law, the tills are set automatically. It all works out even enough in the end. And the Australian paper money is totally waterproof, you can run it through a washing machine and its perfect afterwards!

I get ds to count out and bag up all our coppers at the end of each year of saving. I have an odd child who loves this job.

Instant inflation.Terrible idea.

Nooo Way!! My DC love those pressed penny machines. Not sure if it would be the same if they had to press 5p instead!!

Charities might make more if people got rid of annoying 5p's and 10p's. I usually put 5p's in anyway.

Dc might be better saving the 5/10p's as it is unusual to get penny sweets anymore. Seaside penny machines are often next to 10p ones.

Shops would possibly round down, working on £4.95 is cheaper than £5.

Luff the table top/floor penny designs.

Nanny..yes, dh pointed that out to me earlier. I thought 7,8,9 were rounded up!

make friends with a local shop owner, and then when you have bags of pennies, take them in for them.

they will worship the ground you walk on, I promise you

Why don't we just have a 99p coin? :o