Fed up with clad pennies!

[CalReg]

Went out today to an older park. Was hoping to find some silver or something along those lines. By the end of an hour, I had discovered a couple of quarters, a dime and 5 pennies, all clad. By the end of hour 2, the number of quarters and dimes had stayed the same, but I now had 16 pennies, and not one was older than 1980. It's getting to the point where I no longer want to bend over to dig something that appears to be a penny. I always hold out hope that it might be a Wheatie or an IHP, but so far no luck. Anyone out there in the same boat as me?

 

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[smallfoot]

I'm still digging it all but those zincolns are embarrassing to me. What a total piece of crap for a coin.

 

[Rad1sh]

One day that penny will be something awesome.

 

[smallfoot]

One day that penny will be something awesome.

Probably won't have enough metal left to be detected if it's in the ground long.

 

[Rad1sh]

I dig all those pennies cause twice now they proved to be chunky rings!

 

[Trezurehunter]

I always dig the solid signals, so I do dig a lot of junk clad pennies. I figure at the least, its good exercise.

 

[MidMoTreasure]

Yessir. I have even wrote my rep and senators in the past to support abolishing the cent coin. Canada and Europe have done it with success. It's the zinc lobby that keeps this worthless junk coin around.

Aside - I also wish we would toss the paper dollar bill for a $1 and $2 coin.

 

[caheaton]

I agree that the 5 cent should be our smallest coin (just look at historical buying power figures), but agree that the zinc lobby is powerful in blocking this. Plus, there is a sizable voting block who object to change and feel that they're "getting cheated" when prices round up to the nearest 5 cents.

So, as an alternative I've always thought the following would make "cents" (terrible pun I know). Keep the existing zinc cent, but make it a 2 cent coin (make the reverse a large 2 to make it easy to recognize, or perhaps even reed the edge). Eliminate the dollar and allow it to be replaced with the current dollar coin. Increase printing of the existing two dollar bill. The rounding of prices up a cent to make the price even would likely get little resistance since "it's only a penny".

This of course won't help from a detecting perspective...but it would save the government money and make our coinage and currency a bit more practical. (Maybe even bring back the $500 bill....).

 

[A2coins]

We all go through that good finds are hard to come by near me anyway but gotta keep at it they will come .....Tommy

 

[HeatherM]

I feel your pain. And then you come on here and people are finding four, five or more old coins in one hunt plus silver. Arrrggghhh!!