What Is Your Opinion On Ending The US Penny?

I've said it before and I will say it again for this thread

Cessation of minting =/= demonetization.

There are tens of billions of cents in vaults, coin jars, and active circulation. Zinc cents last about 10 years; copper lasts about 20-30.

We could stop today and nobody would even notice until 2017... maybe even 2018 or 2019. If cents become scarce... just tell the people to dump their hoards and problem solved!

The biggest problem I have with the "demonetize and recall!" mindset is that the US Dollar is the only currency left in the world where *all* coins produced by the mint remain legal tender, even to the present day. That means that if I felt so possessed, I could hand 146 Half Cents to the 7-11 cashier for a fountain drink.

Why can't we let the cent just go the way of the 2 cent, trime, 20 cent, and half dollar?

One question that I never hear addressed is why do we need to produce so many pennies? Production of pennies last year is roughly 9 billion pennies. Roughly half the coins minted were pennies, and almost 2/3 of the coins ever minted are pennies.

The US minted over 300 billion Copper-plated Zinc pennies since 1983. That is roughly 1000 pennies per capita.

The Euro Zone reported a population of 338.977 million, which is slightly larger than the USA. They have 8 denominations of coins.

Billions of Coins produced in Euro Zone 2002-2015
31.16 one cent
24.01 Two Cents
18.72 five cents
73.90 billion bronze coins minted in 14 years

13.67 ten cents
10.43 Twenty Cents
5.75 fifty cents
29.85 Nordic Gold coins minted in 14 years

6.81 one Euro
5.56 two Euros
12.38 Nordic Gold & Silver coins minted in 14 years

There were 91.5 billion pennies minted in USA during same 14 years. Production of the US nickel has been 16.49 billion from 2002-2015 which is close to the Euro Zone production figures of the five cent piece.

Surely there must be someway to persuade people to dig these pennies out of jugs and jars and return them to circulation.

I think that having two mints is ridiculous when half the coins produced are pennies.

Similarly, the US Mint has produced 50 billion nickels since the San Francisco Mint was closed in 1970. Surely some of these are being hoarded as well.

I should clarify my comment. Yes, the value of producing the penny has been questioned many times in all areas of popular culture. But the UK still has a penny, the Euro Zone has a penny, and the Japanese have a 1-yen coin (which weigh only 1 gram and are made out of 100% aluminum and can float on water if placed correctly). While it is true that most smaller currencies of wealthy countries have abandoned the small denomination coins (i.e. Canada) the USA is not the only major currency to keep a coin of this value.

Assuming we do not abandon the coin, the question I never heard addressed is why is it necessary to produce them in such large quantities? Many years, far more pennies are minted in the USA then all 8 denominations of coins in the Euro Zone which has a similar population.

The cumulative production since 1983 when the current composition of the Lincoln Penny was introduced is almost 1000 per capita. Although many are in the garbage, there still remains a sufficient horde in jars.

So the more specific question is, instead of simply declaring the penny demonetized (keep in mind that USA has never demonetized anything), is there some way that we can function with a circulation quantity similar to the Euro Zone? The coins were produced in 14 years and 9 months.
Euro 1¢ 32.50 billion
Euro 2¢ 24.98 billion

In the same time period the US Mint produced 90-100 billion pennies, and the total is well over 300 billion since 1983 when the current composition of copper-plated zinc was introduced.




JBuck does have a valid point. You can't just say there are 300 billion zinc pennies already minted, we are not making any more just circulate them. The most probable result is that you will never see any within a few months.

One suggestion is to make pennies worth 5 cents by government decree. That kind of incentive will bring them all out of the closet, and also remove any reason to keep minting nickels.

Let me be more specific. Why do Americans consume small coins in such large quantities compared to the Euro Zone. The populations are about the same.


Do Europeans have a different ethos about re-using coins and not hording them? Does it have something to do with the banking system? Is it the way the coins are distributed? Do European stores have an unmet demand for small coins that is met in the USA?

Last 12 months ECB statistics
1.647 billion Euro 1 cent
1.076 billion Euro 2 cent
0.745 billion Euro 5 cent

2015 US Mint statistics
Denver: 4.674 billion pennies & 0.847 billion nickels
Philad: 4.691 billion pennies & 0.753 billion nickels

The USA has never demonetized any cash in the entire history of the country. Everything is still worth it's face value.

Should they break tradition with the penny? Should they simply stop making them and observe if the hundreds of billions of pennies remain in hordes? Or is there some aspect of European behavior that can be transferred to the USA.

Don't think you can do it. They tried by appealing to their patriotism back in 1942 (and after Pearl Harbor patriotism was REALLY high) and it failed. In 1974 they tried by offering as much as a 25% premium on them and that failed as well. If they have to offer much more than 25% they might as well just go ahead and make them, won't cost much more and you're more sure of the supply. (Round up 2,500 cents, redeem them and get enough premium to buy a meal at McDonalds. For the most part people just won't bother doing it for that.)

I suppose one option is to follow the Japanese design, where the 1-yen coin is a single gram of aluminum. But minting quantities dropped below a billion in 1995, and some years are fewer than a million.

If they stop minting cents will they stop all these stupid series too?

https://www.congress.gov/bill/101st...ll/3761/text
On November 20, 1989 a bill to to provide a method for removing one-cent pieces from cash transactions was introduced IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. Obviously it was under major consideration since the decision in 1982 to change the composition of the penny to Copper-plated Zinc from Bronze without Tin.

So the effort to eliminate the penny has been going on for almost as long as the effort to get Americans to use the dollar coin.

The 1969 decision to stop producing and destroy the banknotes of value over $100 was followed bin 1976 by the first major article exhorting the public to back a plan to stop producing the $100 bill as well. At this point circulation of the $100 was below one banknote per capita (now it is about 34 $100 banknotes per capita).

Obviously no politician wants to seriously challenge the public on these issues.

Perhaps we should simply state that the policy will be to mint 9 billion pennies this year, 8 billion the next, 7 billion the next year, and so forth. The public will have about a decade to get used to either circulating the hundreds of billions of pennies in jars, or that their cash payments will be rounded off to the nearest 5 cents.