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Every day we throw our pocket change into a little box by the door, and once every six months or so, we sit down and roll it into bank coin wrappers while watching television. Sure, we could just take it to one of the coin-sorting machines at the local Commerce Bank, but rolling coins is relaxing and it only takes about an hour to roll a couple of hundred bucks worth of coins. Anyway, the other night we were doing this, and noticed something strange: we had 360 quarters, 200 dimes, 80 nickels and 300 pennies. Quarters, dimes, and nickels seemed really overrepresented-- and pennies were strangely scarce!
Curious, we tried to go online and find out the percentages of each coin in circulation in America, but it turned out to be surprisingly hard to track down the data. For $5, we put in a Google Answers request, and several helpful people tracked down the production figures for the US Mint. Of course, that only told us the ratios for what the mint produced over the last fifteen years or so-- not what's actually in circulation right now.
The chart above shows the percentages of various coins produced by the United States from 1990 to 2000. Indeed, it does look like our coin collection was unusual: in a typical jar of 940 coins, you'd expect 625 pennies, 77 nickels, 124 dimes, and 112 quarters. So we definitely have too many quarters, dimes, and nickels, and not enough pennies. So the question is: where did all those pennies go?
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Well one problem is that your little box is probably not a suitable representative of pennies in circulation in the US as a whole. The other is that people often throw away pennies...? Beyond that its a mystery...
yeah, another consideration is that a lot of places you are presumably spending cash in the city (newstands, bodegas) price things as multiples of 25 cents, 5 cents at the worst. even places that don't do this tend to round when they give you your change - my daily deli order comes out to $5.87 but i always get 15 cents (not 13) in change.
you should look into the breakdown of which coins, currently in circulation, are the most popular among US numismatists. I bet the answer is pennies.
I may be thinking into this a littel too much, but you have to realize that when you are handed change, you are not given coins at random. There a at least a few more variables in play that will effect your outcome. For example, you have to condsider the way things are priced. Commmon prices end in 9, 0, 5 in the supermarket for example. Many other things like this that i could go into, but no one probably read past the first two lines of this anyway
Well, I personally just throw away pennies. In NYC, there's always someone behind you in line when you're at the cashier and you never have time to search through your change for pennies to actually use, and the homeless don't want them, so into the trash they go. So that accounts for at least a few hundred missing pennies a year, if you're keeping track.
A more accurate way to look at it is to determine what the ratio of quarters to dimes to nickels to pennies would be for all prices between $.01 and .99. To say more things end in 0, 5, or 9 is incorrect. People purchase multiple items and there are taxes.
If you do this calculation and apply it to your 940 coins you get the following ratio
Q: 288
D: 153
N: 67
P: 432
So basically you have a fewer pennies and more quarters than you'd expect but nothing to egregious. Perhaps you pay more attention at collecting the quarters and let those pennies collect in your couch.
wow, it probably isn't uncanny, but if FEELS uncanny that someone else also throws his change in a little box next to the door and then rolls them while watching tv. personally i put my pennies on ledges and mail boxes or wherever, basically because they're useless to me, but maybe a more resourceful person would collect them.
de-evo and chin make great points, and remember this: Folks giving out change give as few pennies as possible. If you had 65 cents coming to you and were given 5 nickels and 40 pennies, you'd be pissed! So you'll never be getting more than 4 pennies in a normal transaction, and more often it's 2 or 3 (or 1). In fact, you'd probably have LESS pennies if we didn't tend to not use them (we get rid of our quarters more quickly, laundry and all...).
This is the most life-changing thing I've read since your treatise on park benches.
All of them are on my pockets.
They are all in those little change plates or tip jars by the registers, not being circulated, mystery solved!
Here's what I do with my change. I put in a bowl at night and the next day I put it back in my pocket. Then when I buy stuff, I always have change to get rid of. Sometimes, if the change portion is, say 84 cents, I'll give them 34 cents to get rid of the pennies and get quarters back. (Quarters go into the laundry.)
If I'm lazy and build too much change (like more than a dollar), then I give it to someone on the street.
um, what state do you live in, Vin? Because there are more "take a penny, leave a penny" cups in Manhattan, Kansas than in all five boros combined. Every time I've tried to leave a penny near a register at a deli, newsstand, grocery store, whatever, in NYC, the cashier sweeps it right up. Greedy bastards.
On an unrelated point, kudos to Jake for figuring out the blog business model before either Denton or Calacanis [although I can totally picture Jason pocketing whatever change he finds while he's vacuuming Mark Cuban's sofas.]
one word on the pennies: FOUNTAINS.
commerce bank. the one with Penny Arcade. they don't take any %. you get to guess how much your change is worth. last time i was there i had $200+ in change. so awesome.