What if...

"FKA-RacecaR" (FKA-RacecaR)
11/19/2014 at 11:07 • Filed to: Hypothetical time

What if someone offered you one million dollars, but it was all in pennies? And you had to spend it in pennies. You can not deposit it into a bank and use it from there. You have to pay with everything you buy using the pennies. Would you do it?

DISCUSSION (48)

TFen > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 11:11

I'd just melt them down lol

Tuned-Port-Injected-Rage > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 11:12

10/10 would still do it.

ttyymmnn > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 11:13

Pay some homeless guy to roll it all into penny rolls, get a pickup truck to haul them around, and spend that shit all over town. I'll make it rain pennies, pennies from heaven.

OPPOsaurus WRX > TFen
11/19/2014 at 11:13

jump up and down, maybe cry, quit my job, build a house, sell current house, go get my job back, my wife would get a Range Rover, i'd get a raptor, enjoy my job and life and not give a fuck i've done it with pennies

M54B30 > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 11:15

it's still a million free dollars. Roll them puppies up, buy a Hellcat or two and give the dealership an extra $20k for his troubles. Repeat at a BMW dealer, Audi dealer, etc et al.

505Turbeaux > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 11:17

why wouldn't I. First purchase would be an automatic coin roller and a shit ton of rolls

CalzoneGolem > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 11:20

They would weigh ~551,156 pounds assuming all of them would be post 1984 pennies and take up ~90 cubic feet or ~2 F-150 beds filled to capacity.

FKA-RacecaR > 505Turbeaux
11/19/2014 at 11:21

Best answer by far!

And I figured most would still take it...because we are opponauts. DIY'ers. We make due with what is given to us.

FKA-RacecaR > CalzoneGolem
11/19/2014 at 11:22

Why do you know that?

505Turbeaux > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 11:22

oh yeah those pennies would be working for me for real. Make it a little hard to vacation but I could make do around town with a mill sitting under the mattress

philipilihp > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 11:24

I would, and leave a trail of severely pissed of retail people in my wake.

Bandit > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 11:24

Yes I would. I would by something worth almost a million dollars and resell that.

Mercedes Streeter > 505Turbeaux
11/19/2014 at 11:24

The best thing is that if someone robs you, they'll see an unholy amount of pennies and probably think "I'm just going to take the TV, that's a whole lot of nope!"

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 11:25

Pay any debts I might have.

Jayhawk Jake > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 11:25

Yeah sure why not. As someone else said I could hire people to organize them for me

505Turbeaux > Mercedes Streeter
11/19/2014 at 11:25

I would just keep a couple rolls in a sock in case someone was serious about messing with it. Just grab one handful or you're gonna get it!

Sir_Stig: and toxic masculinity ruins the party again. > TFen
11/19/2014 at 11:30

This ^

Here in Canukistan pennies are being phased out so I would take them to a metal scrapper, pretty sure the metal is worth more than the legal tender.

CalzoneGolem > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 11:30

Reasons.

I looked it up because all I could think of was how much would that weigh and how much space would that take up.

FJ80WaitinForaLSV8 > CalzoneGolem
11/19/2014 at 11:36

they weigh a lot more than I would have guessed and take up way less volume than I would have guessed.

Rainbow > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 11:36

Do I have to spend them, or can I sell them? If it's a randomly assorted lot, I'm sure there'd be a few thousand bucks in wheaties, and at least one 1943 steelie and an Indian Head. After sorting those out, I'd put aside all of the 1959-1982 95% copper ones until the government eventually allows them to be melted. That should still give me a couple hundred thousand to just spend, and then ~1,250,000 in raw copper put aside, and a hell of a lot of collectible coins to keep and/or sell.

FJ80WaitinForaLSV8 > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 11:38

I feel like you would get really good at having arguments with cashiers telling you that you can't pay with all pennies.

Rainbow > TFen
11/19/2014 at 11:38

That's illegal for now, so you'd have to wait. And pennies have been worth less than face value since 1983, so you'd have to sort through them and not get zinc in your copper.

Rainbow > CalzoneGolem
11/19/2014 at 11:39

I believe you mean post-1982. ;)

Mr. Ontop, No Strokes, No Smokes...Goes Fast. > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 11:42

I would take it but only if they were the old copper pennies, not the new zinc ones.

Mr. Ontop, No Strokes, No Smokes...Goes Fast. > ttyymmnn
11/19/2014 at 11:43

You know about the ass pennies, right?

Twingo Tamer - About to descend into project car hell. > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 11:44

The inconvenience of counting pennies is better than the inconvenience of working so...

CalzoneGolem > Rainbow
11/19/2014 at 11:45

Yep you're right.

CalzoneGolem > FJ80WaitinForaLSV8
11/19/2014 at 11:45

Same.

nermal > CalzoneGolem
11/19/2014 at 11:46

Assuming around a 1,500 lb carrying capacity for an F150, you're looking @ 368 truck loads of pennies.

CalzoneGolem > nermal
11/19/2014 at 11:50

~20 dump truck loads.

GhostZ > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 11:51

100 million pennies is 551156lbs (2.5g a piece = 250000kg ).

And it is 0.433 cubic centimeters of volume per penny. Since they're circular, let's assume they're not tessellated but stacked in a grid. This means each penny would take up 0.5516 cubic centimeters instead (imagine if they were square).

So 100 million pennies would be 55160000 cubic centimeters, or 55160 liters or 2000 cubic feet.

Concrete foundations (your basement, for example) have a PSI rating of 3000lbs. Regular flooring is rated around 1000psi (est.).
Assuming you only could lay them at 75% floor's rated weight capacity, you would need, at MINIMUM, 244 square inches (1547 cm^2) of floor space with concrete , or 734 in^2 (4735 cm^2) on other floors. They would, however, be stacked 1183 feet high on concrete(15.6 x 15.6 in) and 392 feet high on other floors before giving out. So no problems here with weight on the floor.

This means that to transport them and store them, you'd need, for example, a room of 20 feet by 20 feet floor space, stacked 5 feet high, able to hold 114psi.

Assuming you could diversity your purchases, you could spend ALL of your pennies on low-risk investments. If you had all your pennies put into rolls you could treat them like dollars, and buy tons of investments. The yield from US savings bonds alone would be $14,000 a year.

In other words, of course I would.

TFen > Rainbow
11/19/2014 at 11:51

Even if I got 1/4 of face value in cold, hard cash I'd still have $250,000 to do with as I please.

I'd be cool with that.

Andy Sheehan, StreetsideStig > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 11:57

That would weigh 55,000 lbs, which probably far exceeds the weight limit of my 2nd floor apartment.

Jordaneer, The Mountaineer Man > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 12:11

I would BUILD my house out of pennies, it would probably ble less of a hassle, than paying for everything in pennies.

Jordaneer, The Mountaineer Man > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 12:12

to put this in perspective, that is 551 THOUSAND lbs of pennies, or about the weight of a blue whale.

Sn210 > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 12:19

Definitely. I'd slowly buy generic visa gift cards with them and then use those to get stuff

ttyymmnn > Mr. Ontop, No Strokes, No Smokes...Goes Fast.
11/19/2014 at 12:26

No, no I don't.

Mr. Ontop, No Strokes, No Smokes...Goes Fast. > ttyymmnn
11/19/2014 at 12:29

This. http://www.cc.com/video-clips/zp…

Rainbow > TFen
11/19/2014 at 12:57

Pennies are legal tender, though, so people can't refuse to take them. I don't see why you wouldn't just keep them like that.

TFen > Rainbow
11/19/2014 at 13:16

Because: "they would weigh ~551,156 pounds assuming all of them would be post 1984 pennies and take up ~90 cubic feet"

I would gladly forgo the hassle and still walk away with a nice $250,000 (more likely $350-$400,000)

I could do it all with a phone call and wouldn't even have to touch one.

Galileo Humpkins (aka MC Clap Yo Handz) > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 14:27

are they rolled up or just in a huge, gigantic pile?

LumberJunk > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 15:13

My country discontinued the penny.

45bullets > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 16:28

step 1: melt down copper

step 2: sell copper to any company that takes them

step 3: after selling, deposit check give to me by company

step 4: ?????

step 5: get new house, Mclaren/aston/gtr or something and then buy a mustang and classic rally for the rest of my life.

Mike_Smith > TFen
11/19/2014 at 17:16

A hundred million pennies are not worth a million dollars, as raw material.

Mike_Smith > FKA-RacecaR
11/19/2014 at 17:22

You know what I would buy? CoinStar receipts at my local ubermarkt. HAH!

Tohru > CalzoneGolem
11/25/2014 at 18:00

Those two F150's would be slightly overloaded.

And by "overloaded", I mean crushed into the pavement.

Tohru > FKA-RacecaR
11/25/2014 at 18:02

I'd buy a whole shit-ton of Visa gift cards with them. And I'd do it at a Walgreens in front of elderly people and I'd count out the pennies one by one to get revenge on them for paying with everything using checks.

CalzoneGolem > Tohru
11/26/2014 at 06:33

Yeah we figured it would take like 20 some odd dump truck loads to haul it all haha!