Down with pennies.

Wow.. I expected the $20 to be number one.. since that is what most ATMs give out.

Down with pennies, down with nickels. That is a lot of copper saved if we do away w/ both. Has anyone come up w/ a plan to do this? Say have all business require that they round their final price to the 10 cent boundary. Have them take pennies and nickels. But they are not allowed to give them out as change.

@microe: My change jar would be sad without pennies and nickles.

The title of this story is wrong. The chart is based on the "value" of the bills traded. Not the number of bills traded.

So granted there is $625 billion worth of $100 bills, but that is only 6.25 billion pieces of paper as opposed to the 9.5 billion pieces of paper for the $1 bill. So the bill that is in circulation the most is by far the $1.

@ZeGoggles: Damn feminist.

What's with the lack of love for the $2 bill? I hereby petition the internet masses to bring back the Jefferson!

there's a couple of things wrong with that figure --

First, the most suspicious thing is the number of pennies. Various searches for "how many pennies are in circulation" give an order of magnitude fewer pennies.

Secondly, they present the bills in terms of total amount of $ in each bill category, while presenting the coins in terms of total # of coins in each coin category.

A little bit deceiving.

@sn1per: I use them all the time...love getting the strange looks when I use them and ask for them at the bank.

Wow I am surprised there are that many $1 coins in circulation. The only one I ever got was given to me in place of a quarter.

@ZeGoggles: Give me your pennies. I'll gladly take 'em.

@sn1per: I get a lot of them in change for my $3 bills.

@Red: No, it also shows the number of bills in circulation and the $20 wins out by a very small margin.

We used to have two cent and three cent pieces as well. We really ought to get rid of the dollar bill and go to a coin. Dumping the penny is also not a bad idea, but how is Walmart going to advertise their $0.99 sales and give change?

@sn1per: My batty old great aunt used to give my cousins and me a $2 bill every Christmas.

@Kimaroo - 20% More Kitty Added!: If you look at the bottom you can see that there are more twenties than 100s, but of course a hundred is 5 times more valuable in dollars than a 20.

@DarkPsion: IIRC, the government put a bunch of $1 coins into circulation when they started putting Evil Washington on them in hopes that people would start using them instead of dollar bills. I'm sure most people just hoarded them.

Ever since visiting the general store at Jalama Beach, CA where they round every price up or down to boycott the use of pennies, I have gotten onto that band wagon. Besides the fact that they are annoying to need or receive, they cost more to produce than they are worth.

So many businesses I find are willing to let 2 or 3 cents go, I often have to ask "seriously?" when someone wants to give me .99 cents change. You really can't let the penny go? After all, when I'm owed .03 change, I never take it.

@Kimaroo - 20% More Kitty Added!: without pennies and nickels, my change jar would just be empty.

Has anyone else found they're receiving two $5 bills in lieu of a $10 bill when breaking a $20? I'm starting to wonder if there's some sort of $10 bill shortage here in the Baltimore area.

@outlulz: All the Presidents are on them. They are having a party.

@H3ion:
$1 = 9.6 billion bills in circulation.
$20= 6.26 billion bills in circulation.

I think you counted wrong.

Where's George?

Certainly I'm not the first . . . .

This totally thwarts my plan to collect $9.7 billion ransom in $1 bills.

@Xerloq: Oops, so did I. there ate 9.5 billion $1 bills in circulation. My bad.

Still, the $1 bill has the most pieces of paper in circulation.

10 dollar bills are always in low supply at my work. I thought maybe it had something to do with being a middle bill or something, but now I know it's not just in my head. There actually are less of them.

I think the pennies caption should be "billion," not "trillion."

@catastrophegirl: Yes, sad and empty : (

@Triterion: I see that, but it's still moderately suprising that there are more 1s than 20s. But I guess 1s are popular for change.

@microe: That's a sh*t-ton of pennies. Now I understand why there seem to be at least a million of them lurking in any given corner of my house. (Still, an actual million pennies would only give you $10,000).

I've started rolling them just so I can get rid of them, but if you figure in the labor cost, I'm losing money.

WHAT? We have Alexander Hamilton on US bills? What the hell? I mean, what did he do, anyway? First SecTreas, pshaw. Nobody gets it going until #3 anyway.

Now if he called for the Philadelphia Convention, or cowrote the Federalist Papers, I could see it.

Hell he wasn't even born in the US!

@Xerloq: Whoops. Never mind.

@MissPeacock: That's cause she was too cheap to give you a five.

Definitely, take all pennies out of circulation. Its gotten to the point where I'll ignore a dime left on the ground. Pennies, who cares.

@dorastandpipe: i've done this from time to time, about once a year i'll go to the bank and get $40 in $2's... i need to be careful about where i spend them, because there is a certain place (which shall not be named) where the barista refused to accept the bill, told me that she wasn't that dumb, it's am obvious counterfeit. [It would have been consumerist-worthy if she'd called the cops]

@sn1per: People need to stop hording them so they'll speed up production of them.

@DarkPsion: I also find it odd that there is almost as many dollar coins as quarters. The first new dollar coin I have ever seen (except for Susan Bs) I got from the bank specifically for tooth fairy rewards, A MONTH AGO. I've got a whole bunch of quarters in a bin and my wallet.
Maybe the dollar coins are used more as change from vending machines, since they seem to have a hard time dishing out anything except coins.
And the $100 bill amount is pretty close to the $20 amount count-wise but I think most of the $100s are just circulated around in bundles from bank to bank or maybe around casinos.

Not only should pennies be retired from circulation, but also the $1 bill. We should seriously going to a $1 coin. (And yes, we currently have $1 coins but they are in very limited use. This will change when the $1 bill is phased out and when the $1 coin is redesigned so it is more unique than current US coins.)

The $1 bill is the lowest value bill in circulation for any major country. Using a $1 coin instead of a $1 bill saves money because the coin has a longer life span and does not need to be replaced as quickly.

@☠Grяrяrяrяrя, portrait of a chickenwolfmoosepig.: Check if your bank has a change machine at any of their branches. My credit union has one at a few of their branches, much nicer than rolling. Its like coinstar but it doesn't take any of your money as a fee.

@TheKuudere: Not only that, when 99% of ATMs dispense only $20 notes they have to get converted into change somewhere. I bank @ a credit union that dispenses $5 and $1 notes also, and I usually take out cash amounts ending in $9 for the change.

@DarkPsion: The machines for train tickets from Metro North in NY give dollar coins as change, they're pretty common around here.

@DarkPsion: If "in circulation" means bagged up and stored in bank vaults and at currency processing warehouses, then yes, there are a lot of the out there.

But the truth is, most of them ARE sitting in bags locked up in bank vaults and at the warehouses of armored car companies. They store this stuff until needed or wanted and nobody wants it so it just sits. Technically "in circulation" but not where anyone can actually use them.

Get rid of the penny, nickel, and dime. Drop the paper dollar in favor of the $1 coin. Drop the $2 bill (so rare, nobody knows what to do with it anyway) and make the $5 into a coin too.

That's what I'd do if I had my own country. Alas, the Fed feels differently. I say, recycle them all! The pennies I mean.

Am I the only one that associates $100s with the "underground economy"? I'm not only surprised by how many circulate (and that they're nearly 3/4 of the value of paper currency that circulates), I wonder how much their circulation has grown over the last decade.

@whinypurist: Hunch confirmed. Someone linked to this in the Visual Economics comments.

@LastError: I

If you went to the $1 coin in favor of the bill, I think you either have to re-introduce the $2 bill into mainstream use or go to a $2 coin.

@ZeGoggles:

But then there would be an uproar over the instant "inflation" of up to $.04 for cash transactions. People are so ignorant.

They've been doing this in Australia for years and the country seems to be running just fine.

@AgentTuttle: Where I work we are required to give you your change, even if you say you don't want it. I work for a University which translates to government employee, if we are over or under by a penny in the cash register there is hell to pay. It gets frustrating when people refuse to take their change, you are in a bind. You can't just keep it yourself and you can't put it back in the cash register. We do have a take a penny pot, but it can only have one dollar worth of change in it, never more. If you don't want your change give it to the next person in line. Don't make a big deal about it (not that I'm saying you make a big deal about it), some places can't keep it.

@Con Seannery: are they even produced any more? i was under the impression that they were no longer in production