Planned Attack on the Penny

This sign was tapped to the counter of a coffee shop where I was visiting with a friend. She was delighted to see it and insisted that I write about it in this blog. You see she’s a penny hater and obviously thrilled to find the shop owner must also share her disgust of the penny. And they’re not alone. There’s an entire, though not really organized, group that call themselves Citizens for Retiring the Penny (CRP).

Here’s what the CRP leader, Jeff Gore, had to say against the penny in an appearance on The Colbert Report:

• It cost than a penny to make a penny


• What was worth a penny in 1940 is now valued at $.25


• The pro-penny lobby is funded by the zinc industry


• Pennies waste time. The National Association of Convenience Stores and Walgreen's drug store chain estimated that handling pennies adds 2 to 2.5 seconds to each cash transaction.

“Eliminating the penny is like re-assassinating Lincoln,” contended Steven Colbert.

Unlike my friend and the other CRPs I don’t hate the penny. My friend will throw them in the trash. But I prefer to leave them as tiny presents for unknown friends. Or is it as my friend claims—I’m a closet penny hater who just unloads the useless bits of zinc and copper for others to carry the burden. Naw, I just like to make the change finders happy.

Oh, and I thought it was amusing that Jeff Gore claimed to Steven Colbert that he never heard the saying, “Find a penny pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck.” Was he never a child?