US Mint Announcing the End of the Penny
The end of the penny is at hand. The US Mint announced that it will not produce pennies after it uses up its supply of metal blanks sometime in early 2026. It’s official: the government admits it will make no cents.
What’s Behind the End of the Penny?
Currently, there are about 114 billion pennies – that’s $1.14 billion’s worth – in circulation in the United States. But a lot of people aren’t using them. A great many pennies are stashed in jars or forgotten in drawers. If you put them all in one room, you’d need something bigger than an airplane hangar – they’d create a cube of coins some 13 stories high. The average coin jar languishing in a home contains about $60. What’s more, Americans just throw out about $68 million in coins each year.
Worse than underuse, though, pennies cost more to make than they’re worth. Each one-cent piece costs 3.7 cents to produce. Halting penny production will save $56 million annually in material costs. (Note: if that gives you the idea to melt pennies down to sell their zinc and copper plating as metals, there is a law against doing just that.)
What Happens When We Stop Making Pennies?
Pennies will still be legal tender – it other words, you’ll still be able to use them for transactions. The government just won’t be minting any new ones. However, if you’re buying something using cash without pennies, merchants will round the total price to the nearest nickel. If you’re buying digitally (debit/credit card, bank transfer, etc.), though, the cost you pay will include the odd number of cents in the final price.
So, pennies will gradually fade from circulation. Will make that make them more valuable as collector’s items? Probably not. You probably won’t find any million-dollar pennies – most rare one-cent pieces aren’t worth that much more than their face value. After all, experts point out that there will still be billions of pennies out there.
Is the End of the Penny a Good Idea?
Some argue against phasing out pennies. Rounding transactions to the nearest nickel will, of course, increase demand for nickels. And nickels are even more expensive to produce: the five-cent pieces cost nearly 14 cents apiece to make. (In case you’re wondering, the US coins that come in bigger denominations cost less to make than their face value).
Only about 18 percent of transactions are in cash in the US. These are made in great part by low-income people who don’t have bank accounts. If the trend toward a cashless society continues, what happens to those people? Furthermore, many charities benefit from the penny jars that are fixtures at many cash registers.
When all is said done, though, the writing is on the wall for the penny. We’ll find out if it makes sense.
Links
The NGC guide will let you find out how much that rare penny is worth.
The US Mint has a web page showing how coins are made.
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