5 Cent Coins

Here is an Australian 5 cent coin:



The Australian 5 cent coin is pretty worthless. It is worth only a little more than a penny, and apparently it is starting to get close to being worth less than the metal it is made from. Australia stopped production of 1 and 2 cent coins almost twenty years ago for exactly that reason.

So here's the story. I regularly go to this convenience store near my work for snacks or drinks or the like, and recently they've decided to stop giving 5 cent coins in the change. It's not an official signposted policy of the convenience store, but it's happened a number of times, so I figure that it must be some sort of trend.

Have any other Australians experienced this?
Is this a wide spread phenomenon?
Is the 5 cent coin being phased out by the public?

Is this sort of thing happening elsewhere around the world? Do North Americans round things to the nickel? Do the British round things to 5 pence? Do Europeans round things to 5 euro cents?

6 comments:

Christopher Scott said...

I the US we still have a one cent coin and expect exact change. When they round things up there are you getting the benefit or are you paying more?

. r o s s . said...

NZ did away the the 5c coin about a year ago, noe the minimum values is 10c.

Unknown said...

Where I live (Croatia), if the stores don't have the exact change to give back, they will adjust down the price on the bill. But, the big department stores and supermarkets are usually pretty good about returning the exact change.

Unknown said...

In Denmark we had a 25 øre coin untill october 1st. Now the smallest coin is the 50 øre.

And untill 1989 you could use 5 an 10 øre-coins.

All the coins were more expensive to make than the value printed on them. And you couldn't get anything except a poststamp.. But you needed 26 25øre stamps to post a letter. :)

Asako said...

Heyo, I have NOT been experiencing that. And even though its only 5c I dont think they should be jipping you of it.

I didn't know about the NZ thing though, that is interesting news to me!

Re: Christopher - they sometimes round things down here, so it evens out in terms of benefit/ paying more. Interestingly, if you use EFTPOS (like debit) or Credit, you pay exact. Indeed, a dumb way to save money would be to always pay by cash when it's rounding down, and always by card when it's going to round up :P

Anonymous said...

We got rid of it in NZ in 2007 i think. Its way better without it cos you round down instead of up. So say something was $9.85 it would actually be $9.80 which is awesome.