Penny less

The sky rocketing prices of many metals, thought to be driven largely by China's insatiable demand as it rapidly expands myriad infrastructures, has finally made the cost of producing pennies and nickels in the US more expensive than the face value of the coins themselves. I'm hoping this will make the US Treasury finally dump the near useless coins and Jim Kolbe (R-AR) has reintroduced a bill to eliminate the penny altogether. Explains Kolbe:

If my legislation doesn't become law this year, I guarantee something similar will become law when people start melting down their pennies and selling the metal back to the U.S. Mint.

Considering all the pnney-filled jars that must currently infest homes across the US, and now that the value of a penny's metal is about 1.23 cents, that could be sometime very soon. In fact, if the price of copper, zinc and nickel keeps going up, the ever-increasing yield on the metal value/face value exchange could make home-based copper smelting a rather lucrative pastime.