Is making 3-4 billion new pennies (at cost of >2.5 cents each) of each year/mint really necessary?

Estil

And for that matter it costs a little over 2x face value to make each nickel too!

Now first off, I'm well aware pennies aren't going anywhere (I've no doubt the two Illinois senators would tag team filibuster even the tiniest suggestion of discontinuing it because who happens to be on the penny) but I'm just curious, is 3-4 billion pennies or so of each year/mint really necessary? I mean surely there must be more than enough pennies going back several decades to go around, right? And if it does indeed cost >2.5x face value to make them, wouldn't maybe work better to have some sort of buyback program where you turn in old pennies to your local bank and get 2x their face value...BUT how do you do that without it getting abused?

I've gone through a couple boxes of pennies (and a box of nickels too; sadly no Buffalos/WWII's and only one Canadian) and saw all these mintages listed on the folders so it made me curious.

rec78

Yes they are necessary to help Lincoln cent collectors fill their albums and to hunt for errors and ms68+ coins. Totally necessary.
But in reality-no. Canada got it right-simply discontinue minting cents and round everything to the nearest nickel or dime-NO one (except numismatists) really worries about change anymore. Cents, half dollars and dollar coins are totally unnecessary. I suggest rounding everything to the nearest .25 cent increments and only use quarters in commerce anymore. Coins could be still made for collector sets. This is my opinion only and may not be the opinion of the general public. It does seem kind of odd to stop producing coins today that you needed to mint millions of yesterday.

Aotearoa

One cent coins were discontinued in New Zealand from1987 and in Australia from 1990.

(Five cent coins were discontinued in NZ from 2006.)

PerryHall

Stop making cents for commerce. It's not cost effective and it doesn't make sense. Make cents for the yearly mint sets and proof sets. Sell rolls of cents to collectors and dealers at cost plus a small profit. Also, once regular cent production for commerce ends and cents are only being produced for collectors, the mint should start making them again in the original copper alloy.

Clackamas1

States have to have their sales taxes in .1% increments. You are never going to ween a taxing authority off of a tax they already have.

Onastone

The cent used to have real value, but with inflation as it is today those cents are practically worthless. For instance, when I was growing up, "penny candy" was a real thing. You could buy a pack of gum for 5 cents. Today, you would need over two hundred cents to buy one, and that cashier would request them to be rolled.

@rec78 said:

I suggest rounding everything to the nearest .25 cent increments and only use quarters in commerce anymore. Coins could be still made for collector sets.

That's the smartest solution. Couldn't agree more.

JBK

If people don't want to deal with cents they can just refuse to accept them back in change. They can implement this for themselves right now. It would be a windfall for businesses so I'm sure they won't complain.

In many (most? all?) European countries it is somewhat uncommon to owe odd amounts at the cash register, places like the supermarket or post office being the exception. This is because taxes are in the form of a VAT which is incorporated into the cost of the item, so the sticker price can be a more round number. In the US there are usually state or even local taxes added at checkout that create the odd amounts.

The_Dinosaur_Man

I agree with the thought of continuing the cent for collector sales, after all it is the only denomination to have been minted continuously since 1793 sans anything dated 1815. While reading this thread, the thought struck me that suggesting the cent being discontinued means going cold turkey which would be economically upsetting. Perhaps the minting of cents should decrease incrementally while the country adapts to not having it all the time.

WaterSport

The OP said it in his first sentence. Its political. And it's not just Senators from Illinois that would push back - its those reps from Arizona where the copper comes from and least we forget the coin counting, register making, and paper roll manufactures either.

WS

Maywood

The entire monetary system by denominations needs to be restructured to adapt to societal changes and a different economy. It's happened in the past and we survived.

MrEureka

Some would argue that eliminating the cent is a scheme to allow rich businessmen to round up prices, thereby stealing pennies from the poor. Tough for a politician to support that.

cameonut2011

We should pause production and only mint them as needed.

JWP

Just makes no cents

gumby1234

Make it legal to melt cents and nickels and the cost would come down as trillions and trillions get melted and the price of copper comes way down.

Klif50

@MrEureka said:
Some would argue that eliminating the cent is a scheme to allow rich businessmen to round up prices, thereby stealing pennies from the poor. Tough for a politician to support that.

I was stationed in England at an American Air Force Base from 1973 - 1976. There were a lot of US bases in England. The powers that be decided that it cost too much to ship cent coins there so they started the rounding system. All the prices in the commissary and BX and Class VI were the usual prices but when your transaction was totaled up the final amount was rounded up or down to the nearest nickel. The most you would ever lose on a transaction was 2 cents (1 to 2 was rounded down, 3 and 4 rounded up) It was good to not have to carry the extra American change in my pocket but off base I had to deal with half pence and pence and all the other variety of British money.

I saw the figures at one point for the cost of shipping cents in sufficient quantity to satisfy the many thousands of Americans stationed there and it was quite eye opening. We still had the usual other change to deal with but not having the cent was a welcome addition.

PeakRarities

If coin collectors are in unanimous agreement that cents are useless, I can't even imagine how the general public feels about it. Waste of resources, time and money. Eliminate cents and nickels for commerce, possibly dimes too.

ricko

When I go out, I always have a minimum amount of change in my pocket - Three quarters, three dimes, three nickels and four cents. That way, I can pay in accurate cash for a purchase. That being said, I have not used that method of payment since the search for W quarters has been going on... Though I still carry the change. Cheers, RickO

coinbuf

erscolo

This thread is not worth a comment, nor the hundreds of the same topic that preceeded it.

124Spider

We live in a country full of people who are dead set against changing much of anything. The one cent coin has been annoying for decades, and yet here we are, wasting money making billions of them each year.

Heck, does even the five cent coin matter anymore?

Che_Grapes

Maybe don’t need them but remember, the same organization that makes the cents at a loss, makes paper money at extreme margins (!!)

alaura22

I haven't used cash or coins in over 10 years now! Everything goes on a CC
But I would still want to have the mint make coins for collectors,

Glen2022

@JBK said:
If people don't want to deal with cents they can just refuse to accept them back in change. They can implement this for themselves right now. It would be a windfall for businesses so I'm sure they won't complain.

In many (most? all?) European countries it is somewhat uncommon to owe odd amounts at the cash register, places like the supermarket or post office being the exception. This is because taxes are in the form of a VAT which is incorporated into the cost of the item, so the sticker price can be a more round number. In the US there are usually state or even local taxes added at checkout that create the odd amounts.

Lets get rid of sales taxes and figure some other way for the government to raise money. VAT??? something else??? Or maybe, have the government spend less money??

cladking

@Estil said:
And for that matter it costs a little over 2x face value to make each nickel too!

Now first off, I'm well aware pennies aren't going anywhere (I've no doubt the two Illinois senators would tag team filibuster even the tiniest suggestion of discontinuing it because who happens to be on the penny) but I'm just curious, is 3-4 billion pennies or so of each year/mint really necessary? I mean surely there must be more than enough pennies going back several decades to go around, right? And if it does indeed cost >2.5x face value to make them, wouldn't maybe work better to have some sort of buyback program where you turn in old pennies to your local bank and get 2x their face value...BUT how do you do that without it getting abused?

I've gone through a couple boxes of pennies (and a box of nickels too; sadly no Buffalos/WWII's and only one Canadian) and saw all these mintages listed on the folders so it made me curious.

This has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with money. lots of people make lots of money wasting it in this specific way. Money flows through DC only so long as money is to be made by mining zinc, polluting the water and air, and losing more money everytime a toxic little slug is produced. Without pennies there are no lobbyists to keep the inefficiency going. No lobbyists mean no money.

cladking

@MrEureka said:
Some would argue that eliminating the cent is a scheme to allow rich businessmen to round up prices, thereby stealing pennies from the poor. Tough for a politician to support that.

No! In actuality everyone comes out ahead without pennies. Every American would save about $20 per year not being forced to use pennies and everyone comes out almost exactly the same amount ahead. In fact if eliminating pennies were to allow the dollar coin to circulate we'd all come out about $50 ahead though this would be less evenly distributed.

Estil

@rec78 said:
Yes they are necessary to help Lincoln cent collectors fill their albums and to hunt for errors and ms68+ coins. Totally necessary.
But in reality-no. Canada got it right-simply discontinue minting cents and round everything to the nearest nickel or dime-NO one (except numismatists) really worries about change anymore.

It was much easier with Canada...who's gonna miss a couple of leaves? But the US penny, that has honest Abe on it and like I said, Illinois will all but threaten to secede from the Union if they try to get rid of Lincoln's coin!

Estil

@Aotearoa said:
One cent coins were discontinued in New Zealand from1987 and in Australia from 1990.

(Five cent coins were discontinued in NZ from 2006.)

But their one cent coins didn't have a beloved historical figure on it, and certainly not one that saved their country at their darkest hour.

And...I think you guys missed my point/question. I'm not asking whether or not the penny should go on, I'm asking if we still must make so many billions every year. Like, isn't there more than enough decades of backlogged pennies circulating? I mean there must be a reason they made so few 2009 nickels and dimes, for example.

Estil

@JWP said:
Just makes no cents

I meant do we need this many billions made every year...why not say, cut back to...I dunno, just one billion or half a billion or so for a few years to encourage spending/circulating the perfectly good ones we already have, if that makes sense.

BuffaloIronTail

I think about the Mint employees.

Take away the Cent and there would be a lot more peeps unemployed.

Is there such a thing as a Zinc lobby?

Pete

pcgscacgold

First get rid of the dolla dolla bill y'all

Then talk about coins going away.

Estil

@BuffaloIronTail said:
I think about the Mint employees.

Take away the Cent and there would be a lot more peeps unemployed.

They can still make nickels/dime/quarters...doesn't that count?

@coinbuf said:

No, Mr Grinch, I'm not debating whether or not to discontinue the penny, I was asking if we really need to make as many as they do every year/mint when surely there's several decades worth of backlog to go around?

Overdate

According to the historical Consumer Price Index, the cent has around 3 percent of the purchasing power that it had in 1913. This means that our highest denomination coin in general circulation (the quarter) buys less than a single cent did in 1913. Between relentless inflation and the declining use of cash in everyday transactions, circulating coins in general and cents in particular have lost most of their utility as a unit of account, store of value and medium of exchange.

derryb

It's the government way: spread around other people's money.

Snowman24

Not sure why stores don't round up if cash is used. Those that used debit and CC cost stores alot more than rounding up to 4 cents per transaction.
Maybe stores don't want to lose those few cents, but CC's cost doesn't matter.

oih82w8

There is probably something political about keeping the cent production rolling. Do we know of the source of the zinc that is being used? You may find the politician behind the ongoing production.

JBK

@Estil said:
I was asking if we really need to make as many as they do every year/mint when surely there's several decades worth of backlog to go around?

As far as i know, the "backlog" is not sitting in bank vaults or at the mint/treasury - it is in jars, under car seats, etc. If people freed up those hoards then there would be less demand for new coins.

Remember, unless the mint is striking coins to meet a Congressionally mandated mintage (as was the case with some small dollars issues), they only mint what the fed/banks order. If there was no demand from them, the mint would not be striking so many cents.

Estil

@JBK said:

@Estil said:
I was asking if we really need to make as many as they do every year/mint when surely there's several decades worth of backlog to go around?

As far as i know, the "backlog" is not sitting in bank vaults or at the mint/treasury - it is in jars, under car seats, etc. If people freed up those hoards then there would be less demand for new coins.

Is there anyway we could encourage folks to do that?

alefzero

We should be down to one decimal in our monetary system. Coin 10c, 50c, $1, (and maybe $5 or $10) and drop the 1c, 5c, and 25c. We dumped the half cent when it had more buying power than the dime does now.

Estil

@alefzero said:
We should be down to one decimal in our monetary system. Coin 10c, 50c, $1, (and maybe $5 or $10) and drop the 1c, 5c, and 25c. We dumped the half cent it had more buying power than the dime does now.

Oh that nickel ain't going nowhere either...the Monticello folks threw a fit insisting it be returned in 2006! And there wasn't a beloved historical figure on the half cent or large cent, so it was no biggie to retire those. Now if Canada someday retired their nickel, that shouldn't be a big deal...I mean who's gonna miss a beaver? Not this Beaver of course (at 8:07)...

https://youtu.be/KANXdsXhop8?t=487

alefzero

@Estil said:

@alefzero said:
We should be down to one decimal in our monetary system. Coin 10c, 50c, $1, (and maybe $5 or $10) and drop the 1c, 5c, and 25c. We dumped the half cent it had more buying power than the dime does now.

Oh that nickel ain't going nowhere either...the Monticello folks threw a fit insisting it be returned in 2006! And there wasn't a beloved historical figure on the half cent or large cent, so it was no biggie to retire those. Now if Canada someday retired their nickel, that shouldn't be a big deal...I mean who's gonna miss a beaver? Not this Beaver of course (at 8:07)...

But affinity for coin designs should not be why we keep minting certain coins. (I, personally, would be 100% in favor of ditching the dead presidents and their memorials at the curb.) Anyway, designs can be translated to other denominations, as was the case for the gold buffalo.

Cash is dying to digital transactions. The needs for coins and currency are not coming back and will continue to die, especially if they ever de-schedule cannabis at the federal level.

Overdate

@alefzero said:
We should be down to one decimal in our monetary system. Coin 10c, 50c, $1, (and maybe $5 or $10) and drop the 1c, 5c, and 25c. We dumped the half cent when it had more buying power than the dime does now.

Considering the way gasoline is priced, even going down to two decimals would be an improvement.

Sapyx

@Estil said:
No, Mr Grinch, I'm not debating whether or not to discontinue the penny, I was asking if we really need to make as many as they do every year/mint when surely there's several decades worth of backlog to go around?

As noted, the Mint (and therefore the government) makes a loss on every single penny they make. Rest assured, they wouldn't make that many if they didn't "need to". It's not like dollars, where they're making them and stuffing them in a giant vault somewhere in the hopes that someone some day will want them. No, the pennies are all "needed", immediately.

So, why do you need so many? The answer is partly in their current composition, and partly in the extremely low buying power it now has. A penny has been reduced to a single-use item, like a postage stamp or bus ticket: you get it in change, and you throw it away because it's literally not worth your time or anyone else's time to carry it around to try to re-use it. And if most of them are literally getting thrown away, they decompose very quickly due to their easily corrodable zinc core. It even sounds almost environmentally friendly, "biodegradable coins", until you realize that zinc is an environmentally toxic heavy metal which we shouldn't be dumping into the soil and water like that.

@Estil said:

@JBK said:
As far as i know, the "backlog" is not sitting in bank vaults or at the mint/treasury - it is in jars, under car seats, etc. If people freed up those hoards then there would be less demand for new coins.

Is there anyway we could encourage folks to do that?

Not really, no. The large quantities of pre-1982 copper cents people have hoarded up aren't going to re-enter circulation en masse, not when their face value is way below their scrap metal content. People would rather scrap 'em than spend 'em, and that won't help with the coin shortage. And if people thought that banking or otherwise spending their hoards of "lost zincolns" was worthwhile, they'd already be doing it. But for most folks it literally isn't worth the time and gas they'd need to spend to take them to a bank. Or even down to a local charity to donate - assuming they could find a charity that accepted them. Most charities would regard the gift of a huge drum of zincolns to be an unwanted burden, rather than a boon.

There are other causes of coin losses, besides "hoards" and "decomposition". Tourists are an often-overlooked one. Every tourist who visits the US and spends cash, gets pennies in change - and they don't know what to do with them because nobody seems to want them. They don't have a US bank account, or know the procedure for exchanging pennies for more useful currency. Not even the moneychanger booths at the airport when they leave to go back home, will take pennies. So they're stuck with them, a bag of unwanted "souvenirs" that are too much trouble to attempt to repatriate back to the US.

I recently visited the US for the first time in 40 years. Took a bag of zincolns with me, to try to "bring them home". Nobody wanted them, so I brought them all back with me to Australia again - along with another couple dozen I acquired during the few days I was there. Nobody here in Australia wants them, either.

may

The underlying issue is inflation, if the government could just stop spending as much it would solve a lot. A great first step is to reduce new coin mintages to maybe 50 million for each denomination. Clad coins last for a very long time, so thats not much of an issue. If this country could just focus on the most important issues, it would be a much better place.

percyb

I'm trying to imagine anything the government produces being cost effective.

privatecoin

@Estil said:
And for that matter it costs a little over 2x face value to make each nickel too!

Now first off, I'm well aware pennies aren't going anywhere (I've no doubt the two Illinois senators would tag team filibuster even the tiniest suggestion of discontinuing it because who happens to be on the penny) but I'm just curious, is 3-4 billion pennies or so of each year/mint really necessary? I mean surely there must be more than enough pennies going back several decades to go around, right? And if it does indeed cost >2.5x face value to make them, wouldn't maybe work better to have some sort of buyback program where you turn in old pennies to your local bank and get 2x their face value...BUT how do you do that without it getting abused?

I've gone through a couple boxes of pennies (and a box of nickels too; sadly no Buffalos/WWII's and only one Canadian) and saw all these mintages listed on the folders so it made me curious.

Fiat always fails.

privatecoin

@Sapyx said:

@Estil said:
No, Mr Grinch, I'm not debating whether or not to discontinue the penny, I was asking if we really need to make as many as they do every year/mint when surely there's several decades worth of backlog to go around?

As noted, the Mint (and therefore the government) makes a loss on every single penny they make. Rest assured, they wouldn't make that many if they didn't "need to". It's not like dollars, where they're making them and stuffing them in a giant vault somewhere in the hopes that someone some day will want them. No, the pennies are all "needed", immediately.

So, why do you need so many? The answer is partly in their current composition, and partly in the extremely low buying power it now has. A penny has been reduced to a single-use item, like a postage stamp or bus ticket: you get it in change, and you throw it away because it's literally not worth your time or anyone else's time to carry it around to try to re-use it. And if most of them are literally getting thrown away, they decompose very quickly due to their easily corrodable zinc core. It even sounds almost environmentally friendly, "biodegradable coins", until you realize that zinc is an environmentally toxic heavy metal which we shouldn't be dumping into the soil and water like that.

@Estil said:

@JBK said:
As far as i know, the "backlog" is not sitting in bank vaults or at the mint/treasury - it is in jars, under car seats, etc. If people freed up those hoards then there would be less demand for new coins.

Is there anyway we could encourage folks to do that?

Not really, no. The large quantities of pre-1982 copper cents people have hoarded up aren't going to re-enter circulation en masse, not when their face value is way below their scrap metal content. People would rather scrap 'em than spend 'em, and that won't help with the coin shortage. And if people thought that banking or otherwise spending their hoards of "lost zincolns" was worthwhile, they'd already be doing it. But for most folks it literally isn't worth the time and gas they'd need to spend to take them to a bank. Or even down to a local charity to donate - assuming they could find a charity that accepted them. Most charities would regard the gift of a huge drum of zincolns to be an unwanted burden, rather than a boon.

There are other causes of coin losses, besides "hoards" and "decomposition". Tourists are an often-overlooked one. Every tourist who visits the US and spends cash, gets pennies in change - and they don't know what to do with them because nobody seems to want them. They don't have a US bank account, or know the procedure for exchanging pennies for more useful currency. Not even the moneychanger booths at the airport when they leave to go back home, will take pennies. So they're stuck with them, a bag of unwanted "souvenirs" that are too much trouble to attempt to repatriate back to the US.

I recently visited the US for the first time in 40 years. Took a bag of zincolns with me, to try to "bring them home". Nobody wanted them, so I brought them all back with me to Australia again - along with another couple dozen I acquired during the few days I was there. Nobody here in Australia wants them, either.

Bring them to me next time.

cladking

@Sapyx said:

I recently visited the US for the first time in 40 years. Took a bag of zincolns with me, to try to "bring them home". Nobody wanted them, so I brought them all back with me to Australia again - along with another couple dozen I acquired during the few days I was there. Nobody here in Australia wants them, either.

A lot of pennies end up in the garbage stream intentionally. Many people just toss them out in parking lots but even more are disposed of properly; in garbage cans.

Most coins that end up in the "wrong" country end up in what foreign coin collectors call "poundage" which are just foreign coins that trade by the pound. But many coins aren't even fit to be sold in this way because they reduce the value of the poundage. In the US there are far too many Mexican and Canadian minors so these will wreck poundage and many people toss them in the trash. It's the same way with British decimal pennies; there are just far too many.

These coins also end up in parking meters and tons and tons from municipal incinerators. The zinc coins melt and can't be redeemed so they pollute the landfills.

It's very interesting that the percentage of copper pennies in circulation is barely dropping after many years (~12) of hoarding the coins for their metallic value. Apparently penny usage is crashing nearly as fast as coins are being hoarded. In other words if they were still using copper they'd only need to make about one billion a year.

The only reason I don't throw pennies away is every one tossed in the trash costs me 4c because they just make another one to replace it.

1Bufffan

Just remember to mark your calendars for February 12th "Lost Penny" cent day. Spend all your cents that have been hiding! Clean out the sock drawers, jars in the basement and attics, even cleanout the cup holders and under the seats of your vehicles. All purchases that day should be paid in full with cents only. let's get them back in circulation and then the Mint won't have to produce so many the banks will be filled up, then you can request some to roll hunt just for fun.

Manifest_Destiny

As long as the zinc mining and planchet manufacturing lobby contribute to the right people, it will never go away.

coinbuf

@Estil said:

@JBK said:

@Estil said:
I was asking if we really need to make as many as they do every year/mint when surely there's several decades worth of backlog to go around?

As far as i know, the "backlog" is not sitting in bank vaults or at the mint/treasury - it is in jars, under car seats, etc. If people freed up those hoards then there would be less demand for new coins.

Is there anyway we could encourage folks to do that?

Maybe you should start by encouraging yourself to do what you think others should do.

Estil

@coinbuf said:

@Estil said:

@JBK said:

@Estil said:
I was asking if we really need to make as many as they do every year/mint when surely there's several decades worth of backlog to go around?

As far as i know, the "backlog" is not sitting in bank vaults or at the mint/treasury - it is in jars, under car seats, etc. If people freed up those hoards then there would be less demand for new coins.

Is there anyway we could encourage folks to do that?

Maybe you should start by encouraging yourself to do what you think others should do.

There's still 40 years worth of post-copper pennies.