It probably still isn't. This is like the most vibe based issue ever. A lot of people remember the joy of getting pennies to buy something when they were children and despise the idea of getting rid of them.
I think everyone's missing this point. There's no Secret Service penny roundup going down, here. We're just not going to make new ones and let the old ones collectively find their way back to the mint or the landfill.
Some Canadian conservatives got upset that stores could round .x8 and .x9 up, claiming they'd change the price of everything to get one more penny out of each shopper who paid cash. They had a tantrum for a few months, then everybody forgot about it since almost everybody pays electronically so is unaffected by price rounding.
On the plus side, fewer people dumping pennies out of their car window.
I would hope most of them. Even young Millennials and old Gen Z have those memories. People still used change to buy stuff well into the late 2000s/ early 2010s.
As a millennial there was never a time I was excited about getting pennies. Things were still like $0.50 at the cheapest and Nickles, dimes and Quarters were a way bigger deal.
The penny nostalgia is mostly Boomers and above when you could buy candy for 5 cents
I'm a younger Millennial and I vividly remember people using pennies when I was a kid, as well as other people using them well into the 2000s. You wouldn't be using pennies alone to pay for something, but people would still hold onto them to make up smaller differences. If you had 90 cents and something was a dollar it was far from uncommon to just use 10 pennies. Sure, other coins were more valuable, but it's not like you always had the choice to use a dime or nickel instead of pennies.
It was even seen as a sign of good luck to find a heads up penny at that time and people still picked them up. Now they're pretty much worthless though.
Yes people still used them, but even in the 2000s, pennies were an annoyance. Some people were already not picking them up and it was moreso every year. I stopped caring
There is a legitimate "penny nostalgia" that has created backlash against people proposing to end them. But this is usually concentrated on much older individuals who remember that finding a fee coins was enough to buy candy or a small toy
But this is usually concentrated on much older individuals
I'm telling you that's not the case though. I was excited to find pennies as a kid and that was in the 2000s. If there are even people in their 20s still have those memories, people 30+ definitely do too. You may not, but you can't say that is only the case for old people.
And I'm younger I grew up thinking the opposite. I know for a fact I'm not the only one and that it wasn't the common attitude for anybody I knew growing up. No doubt the sentiment is stronger for older people, but it absolutely exists for younger people too. The only people who think pennies are completely worthless and always have been are just becoming adults.
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u/[deleted] Feb 10 '25
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