Replying to a message of Cindy Haglund to Roger Nelson:

 RN>> Q: Did you ever wonder why dimes, quarters and half dollars have
 RN>> notches, while pennies and nickels do not?

 RN>> A: The US Mint began putting notches on the edges of coins containing
 RN>> gold and silver to discourage holders from shaving off small
 RN>> quantities of the precious metals. Dimes, quarters and half dollars
 RN>> are notched because they used to contain silver. Pennies and nickels
 RN>> aren't notched because the metals they contain are not valuable
 RN>> enough to shave..

 CH> Wow. Where did you get all this interesting information. :)

The problem of people shaving or snipping off edges of coins goes back to
when people started using coins.  Which is one reason many ancient coins
are shaped irregularly.  As Roger noted, the fluted edges on US coins made
of inherently valuable metal was supposed to minimize this.

In the case of pennies, one could just melt down the whole coin - but pennies
aren't made entirely of copper any more.

--- FleetStreet 1.19+