You probably have a jar of them. Maybe they’re shoved into the cup holder of your car or gathering dust in a ceramic bowl on your entryway table. We’re talking about the one-cent piece. For years, people have been asking: is penny going away or is it just too stubborn to die? Honestly, it’s a weird situation. We have a piece of currency that costs the government nearly three cents to manufacture, yet we keep minting billions of them every single year.
It feels irrational. Because it is.
The U.S. Mint’s 2023 Annual Report spelled out the math in painful detail. It now costs about 3.07 cents to make one penny. Think about that for a second. We are literally losing money to make money. If a private business operated like that, they’d be bankrupt in a week. But the federal government isn’t a business, and the penny has some surprisingly powerful friends in high places.
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The Zinc Lobby and the Fight for the Cent
Why is the penny still here? You can’t just blame nostalgia.
A huge part of the reason involves a group called Americans for Common Cents. They’re a lobbying group, and while their name sounds like a grassroots organization of concerned grandmothers, they are largely funded by the Jarden Zinc Products company. Jarden Zinc is the company that sells the zinc blanks to the U.S. Mint. If the penny disappears, a massive chunk of their revenue disappears with it.
It’s classic Washington politics.
Then you have the sentimental side. People like the Lincoln penny. It’s been around in some form since 1909. Whenever a politician brings up the idea of killing the coin, they get hit with accusations of "devaluing American history" or "hurting the poor." The argument is that if we stop using pennies, businesses will round prices up, essentially creating a "rounding tax" that hits low-income families the hardest.
Is that actually true? Probably not.
The Canadian Experiment: A Glimpse into the Future
If you want to know if is penny going away, you just have to look north. Canada got rid of their penny back in 2013. They didn't just stop making them; they pulled them from circulation.
And guess what? The sky didn't fall.
Canada implemented a simple rounding system for cash transactions. If your total is $1.02, you pay $1.00. If it’s $1.03, you pay $1.05. It balances out over time. Most importantly, this only applies to cash. If you’re paying with a credit card or a phone, you still pay the exact cent. Since we are moving toward a cashless society anyway, the "rounding tax" argument loses a lot of its teeth.
Robert Whaples, an economics professor at Wake Forest University, has been a vocal advocate for retiring the penny for years. He argues that the time we waste fumbling for pennies at the cash register actually costs the economy more in lost productivity than the value of the coins themselves. Time is money. Literally.
The Logistics of Killing a Coin
Getting rid of a coin isn’t as easy as just flipping a switch.
Congress actually has to pass a law to change the composition of coins or eliminate them entirely. There have been several attempts, like the Coinage Efficiency Act, but they usually die in committee. The Treasury Department has the authority to change the metal content to save money, but they haven't found a cheaper alternative to the current copper-plated zinc that works in vending machines and doesn't corrode.
There's also the "nickel problem."
If we get rid of the penny, the nickel becomes the smallest unit of currency. But guess what? The nickel also costs more than five cents to make. In 2023, it cost about 11.5 cents to produce a nickel. If you kill the penny to save money, you're just putting more pressure on an even more expensive coin. It’s a messy, metallic domino effect.
What Most People Get Wrong About Inflation
People think the penny is necessary to keep prices low. "But what about the 99-cent price point?"
Retailers love that $.99 ending because of the "left-digit effect." Our brains see $4.99 and think "$4" instead of "$5." Even without a physical penny, retailers would keep those prices. They’d just round the final total at the register. We already do this with gasoline. Have you ever noticed that gas is priced at something like $3.49 and 9/10ths of a cent? We don’t have a 9/10ths of a cent coin, yet the economy hasn't imploded.
The penny has lost over 95% of its purchasing power since it was first introduced. In the 1950s, a penny could actually buy a piece of candy. Today? It can’t buy anything. It’s essentially a tiny, copper-colored piece of trash that we're forced to carry around.
The Environmental Cost of Zinc Mining
We don't talk about the environmental impact enough.
Mining zinc and copper is an energy-intensive process. We are ripping materials out of the ground, transporting them to the Mint, stamping them into coins, and then trucking those coins to banks—all for a product that most people immediately throw into a jar and never use again.
The U.S. Mint produced over 10 billion pennies in some recent years. That’s a lot of carbon emissions for a coin that usually ends up under a couch cushion.
Real-World Examples of Penny-Free Zones
Even within the U.S., the penny is already "dead" in certain places.
Military bases overseas have been using a rounding system for decades. Because it’s too expensive to ship heavy crates of pennies to bases in Europe or Asia, the military simply rounds transactions to the nearest five cents. It works. Soldiers don't complain about losing two cents on a burger, and the Department of Defense saves a fortune on shipping costs.
If the military can do it, why can't the rest of the country?
The Counter-Argument: Why We Might Keep It
There is one group that actually uses pennies: charities.
"Penny drives" are a huge source of revenue for local schools and organizations like the Ronald McDonald House. People are much more willing to dump a handful of "worthless" zinc into a plastic bin than they are to hand over a dollar bill. Advocates for the penny argue that eliminating the coin would lead to a significant drop in micro-donations.
Is that a good enough reason to keep a multi-million dollar annual loss on the government’s books? That’s the debate.
The Hidden Cost of Handling
Banks hate the penny.
Retailers hate the penny.
Counting, sorting, and transporting pennies takes time. When a cashier has to count out change, it adds seconds to the transaction. Multiply those seconds by the billions of transactions happening every day, and you're looking at a massive drain on efficiency.
Most "Coinstar" machines now charge a fee—sometimes as high as 12%—just to take those pennies off your hands. You are literally paying a private company a percentage of your money just because the government won’t stop making a coin that is too heavy to carry.
What You Should Actually Do With Your Pennies
Since the question of is penny going away won't be settled by Congress tomorrow, you're stuck with them for now. But you don't have to let them rot.
Actionable Steps for Your "Worthless" Change:
- Check for "Wheaties": Before you dump your jar, look for pennies minted before 1958. These "Wheat Pennies" are often worth at least 3 to 5 cents to collectors, and some rare dates are worth hundreds.
- The 1982 Test: Pennies from before 1982 are 95% copper. After 1982, they are mostly zinc. Copper pennies are technically worth about 2.5 cents in raw metal value. While it's currently illegal to melt them down, many people "hoard" pre-1982 pennies as a hedge against inflation.
- Use the Self-Checkout: If you're embarrassed to hand a cashier 40 pennies, use the self-checkout machines at the grocery store. Most of them have a coin feeder. It's an easy way to turn "trash" into a discount on your groceries without the Coinstar fee.
- Donate to Local Schools: Many elementary schools still run "Penny Wars" fundraisers. It’s the most impactful way to get rid of the weight in your pocket while actually helping your community.
The penny isn't going away today, or probably even next year. But its days are numbered. As digital payments continue to dominate, the friction of physical coins becomes harder to justify. Eventually, the cost of zinc will rise high enough, or the annoyance of the public will grow loud enough, that the one-cent piece will follow the half-cent (which was killed in 1857) into the history books.
Until then, keep checking your cushions.