10 Reasons to Get Rid of the Penny

The answer is a resounding yes. First and foremost, a low-denomination coin helps keep prices in check. Without the penny, transactions would have to be rounded to the nearest nickel.

The 1995 Lincoln Memorial Cent is one of the most valuable pennies in circulation. *All of the coin values listed from 1958 or earlier and 1959 to 2000 came from USA Coin Book, unless otherwise noted.

On March 29, 2012, the federal government announced in its budget that it would withdraw the penny from circulation in the fall of 2012. The budget announcement eliminating the penny cited the cost of producing it at 1.6 cents.

Since the penny costs almost 2.5 more than face value to make, the Mint can make 5 pennies and still lose less money than making one nickel. And, of course, if we eliminate the penny, we’ll need a lot more five-cent coins, which will offset the savings of stopping penny manufacture. Pennies are sentimental.

• Pennies don’t buy as much as they used to.
• Producing the penny costs taxpayers money and adds to the national debt.
• Pennies are made of zinc and copper.
• Most of the zinc for penny manufacturing is imported from China.
• Pennies are heavy to carry around.

Mint 1.76 cents to make and distribute each one. The Mint struck 532.8 million Lincoln cents last month, representing 45.8% of the circulating-quality coins produced in January….U.S. Mint Produces Over 1.1 Billion Coins for Circulation in February.

Mint will officially phase out penny production in late 2022, and it’ll complete its last batch of penny production on April 1, 2023. But the U.S. Mint won’t let the penny fizzle, though. Instead, it’ll send off the coin with 50,000 proof sets that it’ll auction off to collectors.

Economist Greg Mankiw of Harvard University argues that pennies are simply no longer useful as a means of exchange: “When people start leaving a monetary unit at the cash register for the next customer, the unit is too small to be useful.” There are precedents for getting rid of coins that are too small to use.

According to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), under the Currency Act, retailers must accept payment in any denomination within the legal tender limits. The legal tender limit is $2 for 5-cent coins. The 1-cent coin is the coin that’s no longer being issued since 2002, but it can still be used.

There are many precedents for scrapping small coins. The US abolished the half-cent in 1857 and the UK’s halfpenny was withdrawn in 1984. But there are coins, still legal tender, that have even lower value.

Should the Penny Stay in Circulation? – Top 3 Pros and Cons The US Mint shipped 8.4 billion pennies for circulation in 2017, more than all nickels (1.3 billion), dimes (2.4 billion), and quarters (1.9 billion) combined. [ 1]

Over the last 35 years, 107 million pounds of carbon dioxide have been emitted due to pennies being delivered from the Mint to banks. [ 25] A California company called Mike’s Bikes has banned the penny from its registers because “Making pennies wastes natural resources [and] is toxic to people and the environment.”

While countries such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand have phased out their one-cent pieces, Harris Poll found that 55% of Americans are in favor of keeping the penny and 29% want to abolish it. [ 2 ] [ 3 ]

Unlike Lincoln wheat pennies — which almost everyone knows about and saves from circulation — there are many old Jefferson nickels made in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s that are still in circulationsimply because they look much like the newer Jefferson nickels.