can you buy anything with a penny?

when i was little i seem to remember some particularly cheap candies only costing a penny

At Welcome Breaks they encourage you to put a penny in collection box on the till. So you can buy a little bit of joy for Children in Need.

my cornershop (like tracer's, perhaps) used to have penny sweets, but if they still do they're off my radar

and woolworth's closed of course

most places do 'em by weight, i think. theoretically, perhaps one sweet would come out at 1p.

I will happily sell you a penny for a penny

why yes, that's a brilliant answer. i wonder if a bank would make such a transaction. probably not.

perhaps a single pick n mix non-pareil would cost a penny.

when i was little i seem to remember some particularly cheap candies only costing a penny

The REALLY cheap ones were only half a penny. I used to cheerfully take my 10p pocket money to the local shop on a Monday night and come back with 10 aniseed balls and 10 half-penny chews.

Yes, I remember Mojos being only a halfpenny. /old

these must still exist.

I shall investigate in the wee shop at the end of my street on the way home, but I'm sure they don't really do these things individually any more, they only seem to exist as pick'n'mix ingredients.

^ wee shop at the end of my street sells things like chocolate bananas and dibdabs and things, so presumably also sells Mojos and blackjacks and whatever if they still exist.

Blackjacks and Fruit Salads at 1/2 a penny each. I remember when the 1/2p coin was withdrawn, the price of 1/2 penny sweets doubled overnight.

Anyone else ever find a penny on the ground and go to the newsagent to buy two Mojos?

And now, Mojos are £4.50, and always have Dylan on the front.

Long discussion about ha'penny/penny sweets...
I am going to Woolworths now

also...

http://www.aquarterof.co.uk/

I believe Illinois toll roads are one of the few (last?) of its type to accept pennies. Though of course a single penny literally won't get you very far.

do vending machines take pennies? it's been so long

if i drop a penny, i keep walkin

And now, Mojos are £4.50, and always have Dylan on the front.

Mark G stole my joke.

do vending machines take pennies?

I've tried to give vending machines pennies and they just give them back. They don't seem to like dimes either.

someone showed me a neat trick here the other day. you can take ten cent pieces (our equivalent of pennies) and put them into a vending machine. put enough to make .50 or a dollar. then hit the coin return, and you get a fifty cent piece or a dollar. cool!

If you think any Woolworths pick n mix was as cheap as 1p, (in the past 5 yrs or so) you are seriously deluding yourself. That shit was EXPENSIVE, even the non wrapped-chocolate section.

Books on amazon!

here's a penny . . . now off you go to spend it on pennywhistles and moonpies

your thoughts.

you can probably get a handjob from the midget prostitute that works outside my office for a penny.

or at least a sausage finger job.

The REALLY cheap ones were only half a penny

Our sweetie shop (and we're talking 1969/70 now) had mojos and blackjacks FOUR for a penny. But they might have been fakes.

someone showed me a neat trick here the other day. you can take ten cent pieces (our equivalent of pennies) and put them into a vending machine. put enough to make .50 or a dollar. then hit the coin return, and you get a fifty cent piece or a dollar. cool!

And then someone else comes along and buys a 1.20 item with 2 dollars and gets 80 cent coins and curses whoever put them in the machine. It's great!

(PS I am totally guilty of this as I buy a 30p cup of tea at my evening class every week in 1p and 2p pieces - most public vending machines don't take anything smaller than 5p or 10p, but the oldschool cheap coffee machines still take them)

Thread has given me a craving for spearmint Mojos, which I have not seen or tasted since, oh, 1987?

Somewhat off-topic, but what the hell is this captain caveman shit.

http://www.usmint.gov/images/mint_programs/lincolnRedesign/2010-Penny-unc-rev.jpg

all my pennies and tuppennies go in a jar and then to oxfam. takes a year to accumulate about £4 so is totally pointless but...

amazon 1p books usually incur at last £1.24 postage. last one i bought was actually a hardback, ex edinburgh library and more of a parallelogram than a rectangle when viewed from above.

(£2.75 for books, £1.xx for cds)

My grandparents used to collect up all their loose change, then give it to my sister and me on Boxing Day. Counting up all those coppers was the highlight of my year (and for the checkout girl who had to count it all again when we spent it in the C&A sale, it was the almost certainly the lowlight of the year).

anything over 20p(?) in coppers isn't legal tender and they don't have to accept it.

probably costs more to count it than it is worth. what was that about a billionaire dropping a £20 note and it not being worth his time to stop and pick it up.

In 2009 I picked up £37.51 in change over the course of the year.

Somewhat off-topic, but what the hell is this captain caveman shit.

I saw one of those over the weekend for the first time and thought it was fake!

in rainbows?

also
http://www.humblebundle.com/

Last day in Canada for the penny:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/02/04/canadian-penny-last-day/

There are still 35 million in circulation...$350,000 in dead currency out there.

it says 35 billion, clem, but also says "The pennies themselves will remain legal tender indefinitely...".

Missed that--damn, that's (makes Dr. Evil face) $350 million dollars. They'll remain legal, yes. But merchants will be rounding up or down on all cash transactions now.

I presume banks will have the wherewithal to exchange pennies for more negotiable coins and then turn the pennies in for melting without incurring a loss.

Canadian banks are richer than God. I'm sure they'll figure out a way to turn a profit on this.

My hometown in MN had a quaint little general store that had penny candy, I'd go in before school and buy 100 tootsie rolls with a dollar and eat them all day long. This was relatively recent, too, (1997? 98?) but I think they mostly had penny candy to play up their quaintness.

"No more pennies: In big change, Treasury will stop minting them"
https://laist.com/news/no-more-pennies-treasury-will-stop-minting-them

No more NEW pennies. Existing pennies are still legal tender in the USA.

Trump was after our pennies the whole time, found out we didn't have any, realized they really were useless...I don't know--there's a much better joke in there somewhere.