Thread: Playing a video game has taught me...

Originally Posted by NeoSioType

That it takes 2 Yen to make every 1 Yen coin (Japan's currency).

I don't know about my own U.S. currency but I can't get my head around the idea. If it takes more money to make money wouldn't their economy always be shrinking? Unless of course they got more cash to compensate from outside countries? Why isn't it a 1:1 ratio?

It's probably like the materials required to make the Yen coin amount to 2 Yen if sold by themselves. And since we haven't run out of resources (yet).

This means that if you have the capacity to separate metals in coins in a high enough volume to offset the overhead costs, you can actually make money by destroying money. Go to the bank, get 100 dollars in pennies (for example), or 100,000 pennies. Melt em down and separate the metals. Sell them for 130 dollars. As long as you spent less than 30 dollars on the process, you just made money. Use it to destroy more money and then make more money, etc., ad infinitum. Of course, this would be technically illegal.

Its totally legal to melt down pennies and sell the scrap metal. Though you would also want to sort them as depending on the year it was made the amount of metal in them my differ.

I actually know some people who hoard pennies and stuff. Though I don't know if they ever got around to melting them down. The problem is carrying around a 100,000 pennies. And do you want to do that for 30 dollars?

Some do. People also joke about that, since all metal prices are up. They might eventually try making pennies out of rubber.

It takes something like $1.63 to make everything from $1.00 bills to $100 bills, so it all pretty much evens out.

It does bother me that the price of producing a $1 bill is the same as that of producing a $100 bill...

According to this site:
http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/tsul...omposition.htm

The US penny was 95% copper until 1982. It also lists masses. Doing a very rough calculation, let's assume that you can extract about 2.5g of copper from each pre-1983 penny. Copper is currently trading at about $1.43/lb, or $0.0003/g. As you can see, melting down pennies for copper is nowhere near feasible for generating income. This was a surprise to me, as copper production is peaking. Perhaps in a decade or two it will be closer.

Video games have taught me to be nice and work together, and to take charge of things when no one else will, so you can destroy the enemy hive.

Originally Posted by Licity

It does bother me that the price of producing a $1 bill is the same as that of producing a $100 bill...

Why? They are pieces of paper.

Originally Posted by Grod

Why? They are pieces of paper.

Agreed. It's not money because its material cost is equal in value to its applied worth in exchange, it's money because we expect to get an equal exchange for the markings on it. It's like a transferrable IOU that people use because it's easier to trade four or five pieces of paper and some copper pieces than a sheep. It doesn't matter what it should be worth, because it is worth whatever we're willing to trade for it.

Anyway, back on the original subject, the higher denominations even it out.