A penny for your thoughts would actually cost the purchaser 3.69 cents in 2025, according to recent data from the U.S. Mint.
The one-cent coin, which was first officially minted in 1793 after President George Washington signed the Coinage Act in 1792, has been under scrutiny for years because it costs more to make than its face value.
On Feb. 9, President Donald Trump posted on social media that he had instructed the secretary of the U.S. Treasury to stop producing new pennies. “Let’s rip the waste out of our great nation’s budget, even if it’s a penny at a time,” he wrote.
The demise of the “wasteful” penny has been widely reported, but a few scholarly experts say it won’t be a fast process. One opinion comes from Laurence H. Tribe, who is a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School. In his view, according to washingtonpost. com, stopping production and removing the coin as legal tender are two different things.
Tribe believes that the president can legally order the U.S. Mint to stop production, but it would take an act of Congress to change its legal tender status. The article goes on to report that most constitutional experts agree.
Phasing out the resilient coin would require time, changes in public opinion and changes at retail stores, according to economists.
Speaking of change, making change is one of the issues.
Although people use cash less, they still want exact change, according to another Washington, D.C. news website, thehill. com, Pennies might end up in a cup on the counter for someone else to use or dropped on the street or in a piggy bank, which temporarily takes them out of circulation, but exact change is still important.
Efforts to “round up” haven’t been popular.
A 2022 Federal Reserve Financial Services report tackled what was referred to as a “flowback” issue. There could be a “significant flowback of coin from consumers and businesses seeking to turn in their pennies,” the report warned. However, on the plus side, stopping production of the penny could save the U.S. Mint up to $100 million annually.
How the U.S. Mint makes a profit is a mathematical equation. Revenue is generated through the sale of circulating coins to the Federal Reserve Banks, products to the public and bullion coins to authorized purchasers, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. A profit is made through what is called “seigniorage,” or the difference between the price of the metal and the cost of minting and then subtracted from the face value of the coin.
Metals used in the making of pennies is another interesting topic. From the beginning, 1793 through 1837, the U.S.
Mint made pennies that were 100% copper, according to the Copper Development Association. Then, from 1837 to 1957, pennies were made of bronze, which is 95% copper and 5% tin and zinc.
In 1857, pennies became 88% copper and 12% nickel, which gave the penny a whitish appearance. Due to the war effort in 1943, pennies were produced from zinc-coated steel to preserve copper.
Which is why the 1943-D Lincoln bronze wheat penny is one of the most valuable pennies among coin collectors.
According to usacoinbank. com, this penny is one of the rarest and most intriguing U.S. coins. Most of the pennies from 1943 were intended to be made from steel, but a small number of copper planchets (metal disks) were left over from 1942 and were used in 1943 during the transition to steel templates.
Depending on how much a buyer is willing to pay, the 1943-D Lincoln bronze wheat penny can sell for $472,330 (in extremely fine condition) to $2,414,612 (if uncirculated), according to usacoinbank. com. Buyers are urged to be aware of scammers and counterfeit or altered coins.
After World War II, pennies were made of 95% copper and 5% zinc, which was known as gilding metal. And then, in 1982, pennies became 97.5% zinc with a thin copper coating. It stands to reason that pennies made before 1982 may be worth more than their face value to collectors because they contain more copper.
There have been efforts through the years to make the penny cheaper to produce.
However, in 2022, the U.S.
Mint director said that using a cheaper metal, like steel, wouldn’t achieve the desired result, according to thehill. com. Even plastics and polymers as possible substitutes were rejected due to coin-operated machines that detect metals.
Other countries, including Canada and Brazil, have already stopped using their versions of the one-cent coin, according to rollcall.com. The U.S. Mint reported its output of all types of coins dropped from about 15 billion produced five years ago to 5.87 billion last year. Cash is now used for only around 16% of consumer transactions, according to the Federal Reserve.
Pennies could actually go up in consumer value, if production stops and circulation slows down due to pennies possibly becoming a collector’s item. Well, that’s my two cents on the matter … or, actually, 7.38 cents.
Debi DeSilver is an award-winning, third-generation Oklahoma journalist whose writing career now spans almost 50 years. She can be reached at silvercitypublishing@ gmail.com.