How Much Does It Cost To Store The 2025 Lincoln Shield Cent?

$0

The mint doesn't store coins. They are monetized as they are shipped to the Fed's Contracted Coin Terminals in their ballistic nylon bags. One ton (ish) at a time.

I was gonna say - "Store them where"?

Where ever they are stored, most likely a contracted armored carrier, there are other denominations that more than make up for the cost incured.

AI...

The AI was confused by your question, because there is no answer to it.

Freshly minted pennies don't get "stored" in some giant warehouse somewhere. They get shipped out immediately to banks, as demand exceeds supply. This is evidenced by banks restricting or eliminating acquisition of pennies in bulk pretty much as soon as the cessation was announced. If there were giant warehouses somewhere full of pennies, then there wouldn't be such an immediate penny shortage right now.

There's costs of shipping, which the government will save due to the cessation, but not storage.

This is exactly what many people do who store new pennies and some have been doing this since as far back as the about 1968. Many put them in barns, basements, storage spaces, attics, etc etc etc and many of these coins have gone bad. Garages and basements wipe them out in floods and everywhere else in fire. The coins can not take many years of poor storage and this is the fate of significant percentages of all things stored. They can't persist. This is especially true of many of the zincolns. Even '84 and '85 are going bad in very stable mint set packaging with '84 nearly as stable '85 packaging. I seriously doubt anyone can come up with ten well struck Gems of the '84-P with attractive flat surfaces. Obviously it also needs to be free of carbons spots to which these are prone. It doesn't matter much because most are rotting away anyway.

Of course the irony is that individuals who stuck aside nice pennies and preserved them might be the real winners because so many mint set coins have been destroyed. Some dates might be destroyed nearly universally like the '68 cent. It had to be pulled out long ago and soaked in alcohol before proper storage. The coin is common in nice attractive BU and there are lots of gemmy coins but it was somewhat unusual in true Gem. It might have been as common as 4% of mint set coins. But those still in the packaging today are atrocious. You might be able to find a Gem under a light (easily removable) haze but most of what used to be Gem are carbon spotted and tarnished. "Most" don't even survive anymore because they ended up in "circulation" where attrition is simply staggering. People who collect coins in uncirculated condition have a different perspective. We tend to want coins we consider pristine in every category. For my circ collections I add in nice pristine wear above a perfect Gem.

Maybe some day people will collect such coins and discover just how few 1968's survived the last half a century. Of course the hardest part has always been getting out of the mint with their skins intact.