A nickel for your thoughts?

Today is a bit of a special day in Canada, as February 4th marks the beginning of the withdrawal of the penny of circulation, meaning all cash transactions starting today will be rounded to the nearest five cent value. It's been a long time coming, too - each one-cent coin cost 1.6 cents to make, and the last of the darn things was actually minted back in March. Don't bother collecting them though, they won't become rare in our lifetime since there are billions of them floating around. Pennies are still legal tender and electronic transactions remain unaffected (details), but the nickel is now our smallest denomination of circulating currency.

Anyway, figure I'd celebrate by getting a family portrait of all of my on-hand pennies, as well of some of their more valuable friends. Among these was my trusty 20D, out for another horrific adventure, but this time less sticky than the last one. After protecting the mirror box with a thin piece of cardboard, it was time to once again fill 'er up. At this point I usually laugh at how the 20D manual says not to stick anything beyond the lens mount.

The setup

Gettin' closer

Ah, there we go

Once again it emerged unscathed afterwards. In a few decades maybe I'll repeat this if the nickel gets phased out. Fun fact: there was an even smaller denomination of money called the 'mill', which was equal to one tenth of a cent. The one-mill coin met a fate identical to the penny in 1873 (if I recall correctly).