Days of the 5c Piece Are Numbered

The days of the 5 cent coin are numbered. This is the Australian 5c piece I am talking about.

It seems that it now costs almost 4c to make a 5c piece and on top of this there are the costs of keeping them in circulation.

Back in 1966 when the 5c coin took over from the much more valuable sixpence you could buy half a pint (300ml) of milk with it. Today it would not buy a shot glass of milk. Even more impressive, you could have bought just under one litre of standard petrol. Seriously, in 1966 you could buy 4.56 litres of petrol (a gallon) for about 25c (2/6 in in LSD notation) which is 5.55 cents per litre (i.e., $0.0555).

Today a gallon of unleaded petrol (4.56 litres) will set you back $6.63 which is close to 120 times more (based on the price today, 16th May, of $1.459 per litre).

Fortunately for us all the average personal income has also increased in this time—although not by anything like 120 times. If my income had increased by just 100 times from what I was getting in 1968 (2 years later) I would now be making about $380,000 per year and I can assure you I am not making anything like that. No, the average income has only increased by about a miniscule (in comparison) 15 times in the same period. This is probably giving you some idea why many of life’s basics seem so much more expensive these days, because in relative terms they are significantly more expensive, plus, as a ratio, the amount of tax being paid by us all is higher. So we have lost buying power in two ways.

For example, back in 1968 there was no capital gains tax on shares sales.

But anyway, back to the 5c piece.

According to the article I read in the Australian Financial Review (page 3, Monday 16th May) there is something like $198 million dollars worth of 5c pieces in circulation and they are nothing but a nuisance. Vending machines don’t use them anymore. Parking meters don’t use them anymore. If people drop them they don’t even both to bend down and pick them up. And there is basically nothing you can buy with a 5c piece, or even two or three of four of them.

So the word is that the day of the 5c piece are numbered and it is highly likely that it will be done away with in the next federal budget.