You can no longer say, "It's not worth a red cent."

WASHINGTON - Given rising metal prices, the pennies and nickels in your pocket are worth more melted down than their face value — and that has the government worried.

U.S. Mint officials said Wednesday they were putting into place rules prohibiting the melting down of 1-cent and 5-cent coins. The rules also limit the number of coins that can be shipped out of the country.

I don't know why they don't just get rid of pennies and nickles. When I grew up, the penny was worth more than a quarter is today (CPI in 1945 was 17.8, today it's more than 200), and we got along fine without any smaller denomination coins. It would be easy to get rid of both the penny and the nickle. Just round all prices to the nearest 10 cents. As it is, these things just accumulate on my bureau until I finally get around to putting them into a sheath. The last few times I did that, someone broke into the house and stole the sheaths, so I've stopped doing that. Now, they just accumulate.