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Comment by hga | Hacker News Reader

It's a bad sign when you have to debase your currency twice in a quarter century period: in the early '80s the copper alloy penny was replaced with zinc with a copper wash.

Inflation has been "under control" during that period (compared to the Carter peak of nearly 15%), but it adds up.

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Well, the history thinks differently, the penny has been "changed" 5 times in the last centure that's 20 years on average. And the last change happened in 1982 (28 years from now) well above the average time period and is the third longest survival period for a penny ever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_%28United_States_coin%29#...

You miss my point, I said "debase" not change. Except for the WWII save copper by using steel penny, it was 95% copper from 1864 to 1982, and I can't count the two previous changes as debasing it (pure copper to a 89% copper/11% nickle alloy was surely for durability, the change 7 years later might have been related to the Civil War at the time but strikes me as the only possible previous debasement).

Sigh.. and I thought somebody was wrong on the internetz...

But reading the wikipedia article it seems they were trying to debase it in the 70s and went the wrong path and minted AL based coins which were rejected before making the actual change in 82.

It's fiat money; it doesn't matter what's in it.

You speak in contradictions. For example, a 1946-1964 Roosevelt dime has a face value of $.10 but a "melt value" of $1.2022 (today) according to http://www.coinflation.com/

The U.S. government may not like it but there is little they can do about someone melting down coinage, especially outside the country. (But don't do it -- silver coins are worth more than their melt value).

Paper money is different, of course.

Since you bring it up, Dhirubhai Ambani, who was a major Indian businessmen did something like this in his early career. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhirubhai_Ambani#Life_in_Aden

Speaking as a regular person and not a numismatic geek, I don't know anyone who will give me melt value for my coins, and I wouldn't think it was worth the trouble of sorting out the old ones anyway. Thus all pennies are worth one cent to me and it isn't possible to "debase" them.

It seems to me that the problem is the price of these particular metals, not inflation in general.

A penny in 2008 is worth 44% of what it was worth in 1982, when the last change was made.

I wasn't able to find a 25 year chart, here's the oldest I could find, going back 15 year: http://www.infomine.com/investment/charts.aspx?c=zinc&r=...

From 1995 to 2004 it was basically flat, it took a huge jump during the recent bubble and is now again going up beyond that historical range. The previous recent bump wasn't due to a decline in the dollar's value, but this one just might be related to it.

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