Those household hoards of pennies many consumers keep in jars, cups and other containers may one day become more useful after the U.S. Treasury stops producing the iconic coin next year.
The treasury department has placed its final order for penny blanks, and production will end when they run out, which will likely be early 2026, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the decision this week.
With its 233-year history, the penny, officially known as a “cent,” was one of the first coins circulated in 1793 and stood as a key player in the debut of the newly established U.S. Mint.
The plan to stop producing the coin was revealed three months after President Donald Trump said he wanted production stopped, writing on Truth Social, “For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful!…Let’s rip the waste out of our great nation’s budget, even if it’s a penny at a time.”
In fact, the move reportedly is expected to save the government $56 million annually. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the cost of producing a single penny has more than doubled in the past 10 years, from 1.3 cents to 3.69 cents in 2024. According to ABC News:
Printing a paper $1 bill is cheaper than producing a penny, which, according to the U.S. Mint, is comprised of 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper and requires a smelting process to mold the metals. According to the Federal Reserve, it costs Treasury’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing 3.2 cents to print a $1 note — less than the cost of minting a penny.
Caroline Turco, assistant curator of the Money Museum in Colorado Springs, Colorado, told ABC that the penny will become the 12th U.S. currency denomination to be eliminated. It will join the half-cent coin, the two-cent coin, the 20-cent piece and the “trime” — a silver three-cent piece issued from 1851 to 1873.
“We retired them for multiple different reasons, but normally because they were not being used or they just became too expensive to produce,” she said
While pennies will soon stop being produced, they will still remain legal tender, according to most news reports. That means Americans can still use them for deposits and cash transactions.
But while pennies will remain legal tender, they will gradually disappear from circulation, which is expected to impact product pricing.
For example, Newsweek predicted that “businesses, for example, will need to start rounding up or down to the nearest 5 cents, as nickels would have the smallest value. However, non-cash transactions could continue to be priced the same.”
According to a U.S. Mint webpage, the first penny circulated in 1793 featured a woman with flowing hair representing liberty. President Abraham Lincoln became the first president to appear on any U.S. coin when the mint stamped him there in 1909 to mark 100 years since his birth.
Over the years, the coin’s size and composition changed, moving from pure copper to a copper-zinc blend. There are about 114 billion pennies currently in circulation in the United States, but they are severely underutilized, according to the Treasury Department.
Proponents of ditching the coin have pointed to mint savings, speedier checkouts at cash registers, and the fact that a number of countries have already eliminated their one-cent coins.
Canada halted penny minting in 2012. The Department of Defense stopped using pennies at its overseas bases in 1980 because it became too expensive to ship them.
Perhaps, the penny’s value could increase after it is discontinued, but that could take years, according to Turco, the museum curator.
“I think collectors will still enjoy having them,” she told ABC. “But I don’t think that the value of a penny will just skyrocket overnight.”
Read the full article here