Comment by xp84

> activity that those pennies facilitated

Do you mean in the zinc mining and Coinstar? Pennies have been a bizarre ritual for years, wherein the government made zinc worth less than its pre-minted value, distributed them to banks nationwide, banks in turn to stores, stores using them once to give meaningless amounts of money to customers, customers in turn immediately throwing them on the ground or at best eventually dumping them into a coinstar, and coinstar returned those to banks.

Nothing of value was going on there. I'd rather pay any zinc miners and coinstar drivers who have been displaced to play video games all day while still saving all those resources, fuel, and most of all, time.