Where have all the pennies gone? - USA 2026
Ruth
Shipmate
in All Saints
2026 is the first year when no pennies will be minted. They remain legal tender, however, and will be sitting around in jars and couch cushions indefinitely it would seem.
After buckets of rain overnight and this morning, the sun has come out here in SoCal, so I'm off for my first walk of the year, which I will call exercise and later cancel out completely by eating the spaghetti, sauce and meatballs my partner is making and the blueberry galette and vanilla ice cream left over from last night's quiet festivities.
After buckets of rain overnight and this morning, the sun has come out here in SoCal, so I'm off for my first walk of the year, which I will call exercise and later cancel out completely by eating the spaghetti, sauce and meatballs my partner is making and the blueberry galette and vanilla ice cream left over from last night's quiet festivities.
Comments
We've had an unusually wet fall and early winter down here. In Long Beach we're already well over 11" for the rainfall season (July 1 - June 30); the average for the whole 12 months is 12". I dug some shoes out of the back of the closet before Christmas and had to clean mold off them.
It never rains in California.
But girl, don't they warn ya?
It pours, man, it pours.
US pennies were a cheap and convenient source of relatively dense mass for various science-adjacent activities for children. For most uses, you can recover the pennies, so the cost for 2.5g per US penny of mass is the opportunity costs of not having the use of a few dollars worth of pennies for a while. You could drill a hole in something with a 3/4" bit, and a stack of pennies would slide in the hole nicely.
I'll be keeping a large jar of the things for these sorts of purposes for many years yet.
Odd, we don't get the ant invasion until midsummer when it is hot and dry outside. They seem to come in looking for water. Thanks for the vinegar idea, though.
Here is an idea that might work. Use Borax with sugar or honey ratio is 1 part Borax to 3 parts sugar. Use a little water to make a paste. Worker ants will carry it back to the colony killing the queen and her brood. It is slow acting, though. Also effective for cockroaches.
When I was teaching Fun With Tech (or whatever stupid name it really had), we used the newer, zinc-with-copper-plate, pennies to make simple battery cells. We sanded off one face to get down to the zinc, then stacked them with a small bit of wet, folded paper towel in between. Hold the two leads of a long-legged LED against either end, and voila! you have light.
In my childhood, it was pennies on the streetcar tracks.
Yep. The children got a kick out of the fact that they were doing something naughty.
I have quite a number from Disneyland. Two quarters and a penny and they give you the penny back.
20 + C + M + B + 26
Did you hear America is rolling out new coins commemorating the 250th anniversary of our nation? As part of the rollout, Trump wants to have a $1.00 coin minted with his face on it. Several entities are suing the Department of Treasury to prevent that. We have a law only the profiles of dead people can be on the face of a coin.
Sorry about getting political here.
No, I had not heard. No surprises there and no need to apologise.
Please, I need a normal human American thread for my sanity.
I'm getting my hair cut and a manicure tomorrow in preparation for meeting (finally!) my daughter's boyfriend's parents on Sunday. They've lived together for two years, and are starting to talk about engagement rings, so it's about time I met them! I'm looking forward to it but very nervous...
How exciting! Mrs. Gramps and I have been very fortunate to get along well with our kids' in laws. We are having the same experience with our granddaughter's boyfriend's parents. Granddaughter and boyfriend have been living together for four plus years now. He is about to finish college. She already has. We expect an announcement sometime this year.
@Ruth is right - tempting though it is, this isn't the place for political comment; there are threads in Hell and Purgatory for that sort of thing.
Thank you,
Piglet, AS host
My yellow splash cattleya has opened its blooms which are similar to these, except instead of orange, my blooms have bright yellow! I have a purple dendrobium and a purple and dark velvet maroon phalaenopsis which has opened its first bloom on the spike! There are dozens and dozens of phalaenopsis buds on about six of my orchids, so hopefully they will not drop!!
Yes, I need all the exclamation marks because I get so excited when the orchids don't die!!!
I did an absolutely boneheaded thing flying home after Christmas. I of course wouldn't bring a full water bottle through TSA, but I carefully packed the very nice bottle of Scotch I'd been given into my carry-on bag. It got flagged, and I cheerfully said, "There's a great big bottle of Scotch in the middle of my bag," and the very young-looking TSA woman just looked at me for a second, and as she quoted the max amount of liquid you can carry on a plane, it dawned on me what I was doing. Turns out when you decide that late that you're going to check your bag, they escort you back through the exit doors to make sure you really don't get on a plane with a 750ml bottle of booze in your carry-on. The TSA woman was very nice - didn't even roll her eyes once.
How would you like to have a 500+ pound bear crashing in the crawl space of your house? It had been there for 37 days. The owner of the house was getting pretty angry, especially at the California Fish and Game for not removing the animal. Think of it, a breathing monster snoring away under your floorboards. Finally, two bear experts removed the bear and put some electric unwelcome mats under the house. Story here.
That night, we stopped at an airbnb in Nelson BC. We decided to "forget" the beer there. When we crossed over back to the American side, we were as innocent as little lambs.
On the other hand, I have witnessed a car being pulled over at the border, and the agents stripping it down to the carpet, taking the seats out, everything. I do not think I would ever want that to happen.