highroller4321 wrote:The U.S has not announced they are going to steel yet....
Also most coinstar machines do not have magnets in them.
Posted: Thu, Mar. 29, 2012, 3:00 AM
Philly Deals: Geithner sees cash in coins' metal
Joseph N. DiStefano
Email Joseph N. DiStefano
Like an old man with a cart picking up junk on Ridge Avenue, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is trying to turn scraps of metal into cash.
Geithner wants to strip copper and other valuable metals from the Philadelphia and Denver coining lines that mint America's small change. "Currently, the costs of making the penny and the nickel are more than twice the face value of each of those coins," he told a House Appropriations Committee panel Wednesday.
Treasury wants a law that would give it the freedom "to change the composition of coins to utilize more cost-effective materials" without having to ask Congress for permission every time it dilutes the content of the national coinage.
Geithner didn't specify in his testimony whether that means using plastic, aluminum, or other materials associated with carnival tokens. Or the old proverbial wooden nickel.
The U.S. Mint is researching alternative materials for all small change, said spokesman Mike White. "We're in the early stages, with a variety of metallic materials," he told me. Research on nonmetals would need congressional permission. "We have to deliver a report to Congress by the end of this year," White said.
The Mint says nickels are currently 75 percent copper, 25 percent nickel. Pennies are copper-covered zinc. Metals prices are volatile, but they have been generally rising in U.S.-dollar terms as China, India, and other fast-growing countries use more, drawing speculators who bid prices still higher.
Geithner hopes that Mint manufacturing and administrative changes "will save more than $75 million" a year, starting next year. That follows December's decision to stop making dollar coins after 1.4 billion of them piled up, unused, in Federal Reserve vaults.
The Mint employs 1,800 people, including 385 in Philadelphia, down from previous years. Philadelphia and Denver together produced about seven billion coins last year, down from a peak of 27 billion in 2000, due partly to lower demand for pocket change as more Americans use debit cards and other virtual Money.
Contact Joseph N. DiStefano at 215-854-5194, JoeD@phillynews.com, or follow on Twitter @PhillyJoeD.
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