The U.S. Treasury, at the behest of President Donald Trump, has officially stopped making cents.
After 232 years, the last U.S. penny was minted on Wednesday in Philadelphia.
Although change has come, that doesn’t mean that every last red cent will suddenly disappear, though:
https://x.com/EdwardLawrence/status/1988686221556801839
They’ve been around since 1793. Why stop now? One main reason is that they’re simply not worth the cost, as Trump pointed out in February:
Some stores are already rounding up transactions to the nearest nickel in anticipation of penny shortages. The copper coins (actually, mostly zinc these days) are almost as old as the republic itself:
Pennies were among the first coins introduced by the U.S. Mint, a bureau of the Treasury Department, more than 230 years ago.
The cost of making both coins has increased over the past two decades. Some of that is attributed to the rise in raw material prices of copper, nickel and zinc.
Higher metal prices result in higher production costs. If production costs get too high, the seigniorage – the difference between a coin’s face value and the cost of putting it into circulation – make the coin worth less than what it costs to make it.
Pennies cost about $56 million per year to make, according to the Treasury Department.
But the penny isn’t even the least cost-effective currency out there – nickels cost around a whopping 14 cents to produce.
Dimes, meanwhile, are a steal at 6 cents, and quarters around 15 cents.
The U.S. Treasurer says there are more than 300 billion pennies in circulation.
Yeah, the old pennies you could drill out the center and make washers/spaces with (cheaper than another trip to the hardware store). The new ones are too brittle, no copper just zinc. Hell, if they'd go back to pure copper the pennies would suddenly be more valuable - they could be the new nickels.
ReplyDeleteSomewhere in my mom's attic I got an old box from my childhood, maybe 4" by 6", full of coins pre-1964. Back when they were still made of real copper and silver. I remember as a kid going thru all my change and separating them by date and saving the old ones. No idea of what that box is worth. Might have to dig it out some day.
Might be a good idea. Hopefully you have young ones coming up in the lineage that will appreciate admiring the old things and the history of them. Otherwise, cash them in because they can't go with you, but you knew that.
DeleteNo pennies, but businesses and government are still charging to the pennies. I went into a store yesterday and the clerk said if I paid cash she couldn't return change unless it ended with a nickel. She said if it is two "cents" past a nickel they would round down to that nickel. If is was three "cents" or more, then they would round UP to the next nickel... I told her that was fraud and price gouging.
ReplyDeleteI know they are going to bring back the penny if they are going to insist to charge to the penny, unless they completely change all the prices to a nickel denomination. Our money is based on Base 10 model, everything is divided by "1."
DeleteI'm hearing that a lot of stores are already, or have been, changing prices to account for the exit of the penny. The rounding up or down is going to go through a fight in court as soon as enough people get tired of it seeming to always getting rounded up. I've always thought that anything you buy that has taxes on it should have the taxes already priced in.
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