Rounds 3 and 4

Neck and neck here, lets move into the next round

ROUND 3: Is the time spent handling pennies really wasted?
This is an interesting one... The average person spends 1.2-2.4 hours a year handling pennies.

ACC: Their main argument is that retail workers are not paid according to their productivity and it is crazy to think that cashiers would spend these extra seconds cleaning or restocking shelves. They are also completely against the myth that eliminating the penny would completely eliminate productivity loss.
CRP: ^ You've got a point there. But its not the wasted time that could be made up with other productive activities, its the faster queues and less time taken at each transaction that matters.

Think Black Friday:
It's 5:30am and you just get your [insert big on sale item here] for 50% off.
You head over to the cash registers and see a customer just leave.
Begin to walk over but turn your head and see the massive line of 50 people all waiting to pay.
You spend the next 20-30 minutes waiting for your turn to exchange awkward small talk with a cashier as you wait for your change.
You pocket it and then look back at the end of the day wondering, "how long was I waiting in line for people just getting pennies out of their purse/pocket/wallet/cash register?

The CRP did a nifty little study on this exact time frame and it was between 2 and 2.5 seconds per transaction just for pennies. If you've got 50 people in front of you, thats more than two minutes wasted on pennies in a single day. Just waiting...
WINNER: CRP

ROUND 4: Charity
Most people have seen people collecting change for tons of different causes, but will getting rid of the tiny, plentiful coin really impact contributions.

ACC: In 2009, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society celebrated collecting its 15 billionth coin. 15 billion... thats 150 million dollars in pennies. I wouldn't even know what to do with that many pennies

Just think, an endless waterfall of pennies...


CRP: Once the pennies have been completely exhausted, charities will begin collecting nickels. This seems like a somewhat ludicrous claim because the U.S. hasn't done anything like this before, but after elimination the penny in other countries, charities have reported collecting almost the same amount of money per year.

WINNER: CRP
Although the Americans for Common Cents reported such a large denomination of pennies, there are still millions more that are collected through checks and large deposits and there has been no change in other countries regarding their donations.