In today’s economy, with today’s prices, coins have become nearly worthless. We all know that the penny costs more to manufacture than it is “worth”. When was the last time you paid for anything with a few pennies? Or with a few nickels? Heck, even paying for anything with a few quarters is becoming a bit harder to do.
So, how do you know when coins are worthless? (besides their worth being less than metallic value) People start using them regularly (and even commercially) for purposes other than as currency. Like, I dunno, maybe using coins as an alternative to tile. Someone has used Nickels to tile their bathroom floor. There’s several instances of Pennies being used as tile. A bathroom tiled with pennies. And an entire restaurant floor.
Kinda looks cool, actually. I can’t find a figure on the pennies, but according to the post, the nickel floor has 195 nickels per square foot. Or, about 9.75 a square foot for flooring. Kind of expensive for flooring, really. You can get cheap ceramic tile for less than $3 a square foot. If I had to guess, I’d bet that the pennies are comparable to that price though. Maybe you could even design a mosaic of some sort. Lincoln’s bust in pennies surrounded by nickels for a background, perhaps.
What’s next? Wallpapering with $1 bills? That might look kinda cool.
Image credit: Penny Floor: Hotel Congress by cobalt123, on Flickr
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That does look really cool! But as the blogger of “The Saved Quarter”, I’ve got to argue that change can add up to make a difference! 🙂 I save up all my spare change and turn it in every month or two to add to our fledgling emergency fund. So far this year I’ve saved over $100 in change. I pay cash for just about everything, so a lot of change comes into my life. Perhaps when I’m done the challenge, I’ll save my pennies for wallpaper…
That does look pretty interesting! Depreciating currency will mean the end of the cheapest metallic coins as they become worth more as commodities than as currency…
Hmmm…. pennies as wallpaper… That might have legs. I do like the look of it. And I’ve seen it used as a countertop as well, so there are multiple applications to it.
You know as much as pennies might be worth close to nothing, I still couldn’t do it. Every time I’d look at the floor I would call myself an idiot. Even a penny has some kind of value.
There has been talk for years of doing away with pennies and rounding to the nearest nickel. I’ll bet we see that change happpen within the next 10 years.
That floor looks great. I would love a wall of dollar bills!
Hmmmm. Coin floor tiles. Could be cool!
That one site – I think it’s coinflation.com – does a great job of showcasing how relatively worthless coins have become. Probably about time that we wind down the penny, IMO.