If you have ever found a penny on the ground and walked past it, you are not alone. For years, the humble one-cent coin has been considered more of a nuisance than a necessity. Now, the U.S. Treasury Department has announced plans to stop producing new pennies, officially starting the phase-out of one of America’s oldest coins.
This move is mostly about money—it costs over three cents to make just one penny. That is right, a coin worth one cent costs more than three times that to produce. Even former President Donald Trump called it wasteful, saying on social media, “For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful!”
When will the U.S. stop making pennies?
The Treasury made its final order of penny blanks—the metal discs used to stamp coins—this month. According to a Treasury spokesperson, the U.S. Mint will continue producing pennies only until that inventory of blanks runs out. After that, no more new pennies will be made.
If you are wondering what this means for your spare change jar—don’t worry. You can still use your existing pennies for purchases. But once they stop circulating, stores will start rounding cash transactions up or down to the nearest nickel. Digital transactions, of course, will not be affected.
How will businesses handle transactions without pennies?
One of the biggest concerns about removing the penny is how it will affect cash transactions. If you are paying with coins, will you end up losing money over time? Not really.
Most businesses will follow the “rounding rule” that other countries, like Canada and Australia, already use. For example:
- $4.01 or $4.02 will round down to $4.00
- $4.03 or $4.04 will round up to $4.05
And again, if you are using a credit card or paying digitally, no rounding will be needed at all.
What will happen to the pennies already in circulation?
Even though new pennies are going away, the old ones are not suddenly becoming illegal. All existing pennies will remain legal tender. That means you can still use them to pay for things, deposit them in the bank, or collect them if you are into coin collecting.
However, with no new ones entering circulation, they will gradually start to disappear from daily use, especially as businesses and banks stop giving them out. So if you have a stash, now might be a good time to cash them in or save a few as souvenirs.
What does this mean for coin collectors?
For coin collectors, this announcement is actually pretty exciting. Just like when other coins have been retired, the value of certain rare pennies could go up over time. If you have older pennies—especially ones from before 1982, when they were made mostly of copper—they might be worth more than face value already.
Keep an eye out for wheat pennies, error coins, or special editions, because collectors could be willing to pay a premium for them.
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