In A Big Change, The Penny Is Going Away

Offering someone a penny for their thoughts could cost a nickel, and it’s not because of inflation.

In a big change, the U.S. Treasury Department plans to stop minting pennies in early 2026 after a current production run is complete, ending the penny’s 233-year reign as the cornerstone of U.S. currency. When that happens, the only 1-cent pieces available will be those already in circulation.

The announcement by the Treasury Department earlier this month comes after President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency team raised questions this winter about the cost of making a penny, which is about 3.7 cents.

“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful!” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social site in
February. “I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies.”

They're not as financially useful as they were in other times as prices have gone up, and digital technologies have overall reduced the use of physical bills and coins for many people. Advocates have been calling for the elimination of the penny for decades.

For example, the Coin Coalition, funded by vending machine manufacturers, arcade owners, and soft drink companies, supports eliminating the penny and the paper dollar bill. The National Association of Convenience Stores has argued eliminating the penny would speed up transaction times.

The Cost Of Rounding Up

That doesn’t necessarily mean you should start fishing pennies out of piggy banks, jars or wherever you’ve been stashing them.

As the penny is phased out, prices will reflect the nickel as the smallest denomination. People can still spend the pennies in circulation. They’re still legal tender. More than $1 billion worth are in circulation, NPR reported.

But here’s the thing: Phasing out pennies could create the need to produce more nickels, and it’s even more expensive to mint the 5-cent pieces — about 13.8 cents a pop, according to the U.S. Mint’s 2024 annual report.

“Without the penny, the volume of nickels in circulation would have to rise to fill the gap in small-value transactions. Far from saving money, eliminating the penny shifts and amplifies the financial burden,” said American for Common Cents, a pro-penny group funded primarily by Artazn, the company that has the contract to provide the blanks used to make pennies.

According to the report, if the Mint produces only 850,000 additional nickels in 2025 to meet retailer demand, it would negate the savings achieved by eliminating the penny. If nickel production returns to normal levels, it would result in a cost that is approximately $78 million higher than the savings from not minting pennies.

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Mark Weller, the executive director of Americans for Common Cents, told CNN the Mint would probably have to make between 2 million and 2.5 million nickels a year if pennies are discontinued. He based his projection on what’s happened in other countries that have stopped making their lowest-valued currency.

“In most countries, the lowest domination coin is the most minted coin,” he said.

Also, he noted the cost of making pennies has been relatively steady in recent years, while the cost to mint a nickel has risen about 20 percent since 2022 as the cost of raw materials to make it has also increased.

Penny Punches Above Its Value

The decision doesn’t take into consideration the value of pennies and other coins to archeologists, according to Frank Holt, an emeritus professor at the University of Houston who has studied the history of coins in his work

“Since 1793, we have continuously seeded the archeological record with datable pennies, and now we’re going to stop doing that,” Holt lamented in an interview with The Associated Press. “In 2,000 years, there are going to be archeologists pulling out what hair they have left saying, ‘What am I going to do now that I don’t have these datable objects there?’”

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And for something with such a small face value, the copper-colored coin has punched above its denomination in the culture, Holt said.

“It’s not just an economic argument, because pennies and all coins are embedded in our culture. They reflect our politics, our religion, our art, our sense of ourselves, our ideals, our aspirations,” he said “We put mottos on them and self-identifiers and we decide — in the case of the United States — which dead persons are most important to us and should be commemorated.”

Holt also pointed to the traditions of putting pennies in loafers, of rhymes like “See a penny, pick it up, all the day you'll have good luck,” and of people who think an unexpected penny sighting could be a sign from a loved one who has passed on.

A Bigger Conversation In The Background

The discussion of whether there should be pennies is actually part of a larger conversation, Ursula Dalinghaus, an assistant professor of anthropology at Ripon College in Wisconsin who studies the anthropology of money, told The AP.

For example, a bedrock of American culture is the price tag ending in $.99, somehow trying to convince buyers that the 1-cent difference keeping the cost from the next dollar makes it a good deal, she said.

What happens to that price now?

Also, while many people have switched over to digital forms of payments and couldn't even tell you the last time they carried a coin around or had a bill in their wallets, there are many people who still use all kinds of physical currency — yes, even pennies.

“Cash is very important for a lot of people to budget, to keep control of costs. Even just donating a penny to someone asking for small change, it does add up,” she says. “I feel like we’re far too quick to only look at what is the cost of minting it or distributing it and we’re not really willing to look at the everyday experiences and interactions people have. So maybe if we don’t use small change, we don’t think about it. But other people do.”

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In a final irony, news of the penny’s fate came out on the eve of Lucky Penny Day on May 23.

“We don’t have a lucky nickel day. We don’t have a lucky dime day, lucky quarter day, we only have a Lucky Penny Day," Holt said. “And why is that? It’s more than money. It is more than an economic tool. We’ve endowed the penny with almost mystical, magical powers to bring us luck, to change our fortunes.”

Will Pennies Become More Collectible?

With an estimated 114 billion pennies in circulation, phasing them out isn’t expected to make them more valuable.

Some, however, are worth much more than their face value — for example, certain Lincoln wheat pennies could fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the condition.

“There are million-dollar pennies, but there are no $100 million pennies,” Donn Pearlman, a spokesperson for the Professional Numismatists Guild, a nonprofit organization composed of many of the nation’s rare coin experts, told USA Today. “Only a few Lincoln cents dated 1909 to 1958 with the wheat stalks design on the back have sold for $1 million or more.”

A few 1943 copper Lincoln wheat pennies have sold for $1 million, but not all are worth that, John Feigenbaum, publisher of rare coin price guide Greysheet, told USA Today.

The pennies were accidentally produced using copper when the Mint was supposed to use zinc to save copper for the World War II effort.

Other sought-after Lincoln Wheat Pennies from 1909 to 1958 are, according to Bullion Exchanges:

• 1909-S VDB Lincoln Wheat Penny
• 1909-S Lincoln Wheat Penny
• 1914-D Lincoln Wheat Penny
• 1922-D Lincoln Wheat Penny
• 1931-S Lincoln Wheat Penny
• 1944 Lincoln Wheat Penny

The Associated Press contributed reporting.