Obama Adminstration's Plan To Change Metal In US Coins

Unless the new cent is made of plastic, you can bet that the appropriate changes in the higher-denomination coins will have to offset the cost of minting cents. Note that no mention is made of curtailing the wasteful continued production of dollar coins. (Interesting, too, that the report refers to the "penny", not the cent.)

IMO they can get rid of the cent and Nickel. round everything to 10¢. I hate to say it but they could get rid of the dollar bill too and just use them 1$ coins that everyone hates. I also think that every state should have bottle deposit

Given the choice, I would pick smaller coin sizes over "less expensive metals". We're pretty familiar with two coinage disasters already--the steel cent and the zinc cent. And, seeing how many other countries have phased out their 1/100 coin, I doubt we really need the cent--but I would still miss it. Coins should be practical and useful--with sizes and denominations adjusted as needed. Many smaller denominations use "aluminum bronze", which I consider a superior alternative to zinc or aluminum.

I think that changing the metal will result in a lower life expectancy of coins, which will in turn result in the need for higher mintages. Where the avg life span is 30 years right now.. I think that changing to more corrosion prone metals will drop the life expectancy to around 10-15 years. But I do look forward to 1943 copper cent style accidents.

In other words the only way we can keep the penny is if all the coins are made out of zinc.

Aluminium-bronze might look great, but it's mostly made of copper (typically around 90%), so that alloy is definitely out.


Whatever alternative is selected has to be cheaper than zinc - which is currently priced at $2145/tonne.

Tin is currently at $12250/tonne, or $12.25/kg or 1.2 cents/gram; a 1 cent coin made of pure tin would have to be really thin - and tin is too soft to last long in circulation when it's that thin. I'd rule it out as being way too expensive.

Aluminium is currently at $2085/tonne, or 0.2 cents/gram - it's still quite usable as an alternative - it's less dense than the other suggested alternatives, so you can get more "coins per tonne" out of it. Aluminium was rejected as a coinage metal for the cent back in 1974 because it looked "too cheap" - it was seen as a metal that only third-world or communist countries used for their coins. I don't think it takes a plating too well, either. Perhaps America's attitude has changed.

"Steel" is priced according to what properties you want it to have. I think your typical scrap/mild steel is fetching around $500/tonne (.05 cents per gram) at the moment. As you can see, it's easily the cheapest option around... which is why just about everyone else is using it. Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, the Eurozone, Great Britain, Brazil, South Africa, China, all use mostly steel coinage. Australia, Israel, Japan and Taiwan are some noteworthy economies that haven't (yet) switched to steel; Australia, Japan and Taiwan haven't reformed their currencies in decades and Israel throws away it's entire currency system every decade or so anyway. The great advantage of steel is that you can plate it with just about anything - copper, nickel, brass - so the colour can stay the same. Yet inflation can make even steel coins too expensive to make - just look at the situation in India a couple of years ago, where a single steel 1 rupee coin could be melted down and made into 16 rupees worth of razor blades.

All this pricing doesn't include the costs of turning that metal into coin. With precious metal coinage, the cost of manufacture is negligible, but not so for base metal coins. Tin is soft, so is cheap to turn into coin. Steel is hard, and therefore expensive.


The mint must make a profit because too many people are ready to take advantage of the government when the mint makes a loss. The government - any government - must make it's coins unattractive to hoarders and coin melters. If the mint doesn't make a profit on every single coin it makes, it's effectively giving the government's money away to the hoarders for nothing.

You're not supposed to want to hoard any of the coins, because hoards remove coins from circulation, forcing the government to make even more of them. What's the point of a government making squillions of coins if each and every one of them is snaffled up by people that know they're more valuable than face value? People already hoard your "copper" cents; even the zinc cents and nickels are technically worth hoarding now, and it won't be too long before the dimes and quarters join them.

I would have to agree with GFR3.
They could save SO MUCH MONEY by not continuing to produce Billions of coins across the boards on ALL denominations......and completely stop production of Native Dollars, Cents, and the Presidential dollars. And after a few years, resume Prez. dollars and do away with the FRN.
Just cut "wasteful" unnecessary coinage production first, before "devaluing" our coinage any further ! This would LITERALLY save TONS of money !
The Nickel and Dime mintage numbers for last year is "sort of" an example.....but they could have minted MUCH FEWER than even that....and the sun would have still risen tomorrow ! Mint only 25% of all denominations for about 5 years........we'll be fine.......there are still obscene amounts of recent years coins that will last 100 years or more in circulation !