DEVALUED PENNIES : WHY THE REPORTAGE ON PENNIES IS ALL WRONG : CONSIDER YOUR PIGGY BANK
Ever buy an expensive coat and think "but it's a good investment because I'm going to get years of wear out of this?" You're not thinking about single use, you're thinking about REUSING the item.
Let's say the coat is a stretch for you, your budget, because it's a couple hundred dollars. You start thinking about the classic cut, the winters ahead, and that, so long as you don't get too fat or too thin, you can wear that coat hundreds of times. If you wear that $200 coat fifty times a winter, for five winters, you can see how little it costs PER WEAR. ($200 divided by 250 =?)
You might also do this when you thrift shop and are buying used clothing. You might think "Someone else shrunk these pants and they are not new off the rack, but at only $10, if I wear these pants ten times that's only a dollar a wear. (Jeans that fit are often a great value per wear. The designers changing the essential shape of them, the length, the width of the leg by year is the only thing that makes a purchase of jeans questionable value-wise.)
So what I'm getting at is THE COST OF MANUFACTURING A PENNY IS NOT THE POINT AT ALL. It's the FACT that pennies are reused thousands of times. If they were not, we would not have so many years of them STILL IN CIRCULATION. Pennies may cost more to make them than a penny, but if you consider REUSE they are a terrific value.
The devaluation of the dollar makes the value of pennies so devalued some people don't think we need them. But that is not the point.
We do. We do not need prices or taxes rounded up to a nickle.
Once there are no more pennies, the nickles will be next to be exterminated.
Here is a true story.
When I got my dog, and had to watch for hazards such as broken glass, rotting meat on discarded chicken bones, and so on, while walking her, I began to find pennies. I stooped to pick up her poo. I stooped to pick up pennies.
I had a piggy bank in my closet and I threw the coins in there and forgot about them.
I was using a library further from home than most people would travel. The library closest to me had become scary, requiring constant security and visits by the police. I traveled to this other library which was quiet and underutilized until about three in the afternoon, when the school children came in. That branch was supporting seventeen schools!
One day the head librarian, anticipating a lack of funding for their summer reading program, told me that she was not going to be able to give participating children the things she had in the past. They usually got back packs, school supplies, even new shoes for gym. I said I would try to help. I called office supply stores and tried to get the school supplies, but was told they needed months to process such requests.
One day I walked into a 99 Cents Only Store on the way to that library. I asked for the manager and she was willing to give me things people had returned. However, while some of these things might work as prizes, there weren't school supplies.
I went home and while laying in bed, trying to figure out how to get what was needed, I remembered my piggy bank.
I'd never counted how many pennies I'd stooped to pick up while walking my dog. I opened the piggy bank and there was over $40 in it! (40 X 100 = ?)
I called the manager at that 99 Cents Only Store and asked her if she would be willing to take this amount to provide me the school supplies. She was. I warned her it was all pennies.
I turned over the piggy bank and she gave me so many boxes of crayons, pens and pencils, color markers, notebooks and diaries, and so on that, when I got this all to the library, I was told that it would be enough for several summers. Maybe even years.
That was the true value of pennies.
C 2025 Christine Trzyna
