Florida hardware store bans the penny

An 84-year-old hardware store in Coconut Grove, Fla., has decided to join the modern movement to do away with pennies in cash transactions, according to an article in the Miami Herald.

Shell Lumber now has a large sign at the front door with an image of a penny with a red slash through it. It reads, “No more pennies!” The sign also explains that the store will round up cash sales in the customer’s favor, which maxes out at four cents. 

The store owner, who still gives out free popcorn and snow cones in the summer, said he was spending too much staff time counting roughly 1,200 pennies needed each day for the stores’ 10 registers. Credit card customers will pay the full amount because no pennies have to change hands.

Shell Lumber is following in the footsteps of military commissaries, which stopped shipping pennies overseas in the 1980s and randomly round up purchases on U.S. bases. Canada has announced a plan to eliminate its own one-cent piece as a cost-saving measure.