Since it now costs more than a penny to make a penny, maybe it’s time for a retirement party.
The cost of metal in the one-cent piece recently rose above 0.8 cents. Add another six-tenths of a cent for production expenses, and the U.S. Mint is losing nearly a half-cent on every cent it stamps.
One red cent no longer buys you anything. Most Americans find them so inconvenient that they put them in a bowl by the cash register. Pennies weigh down purses and pockets. You can’t use them in vending machines or parking meters. Some merchants don’t even return change if it’s a few pennies.
Still, last year, the Mint cranked out 7.7 billion pennies – more than the total of all the other coins it produced. Where are all the pennies going? Into piggy banks, maybe, or dresser drawers and jars when wallets get too fat.
A New York Times article suggested recently that the penny might be forced into retirement if metals prices rise so high that it would be attractive to melt them down for the metals they contain, including a little copper and a lot of zinc. Since 2003, zinc prices have tripled, thanks to industrial demand and speculation. Copper futures this year have soared on the New York Mercantile Exchange, fueled in part by demand from China.
It’s also has been suggested that the mint could switch to making pennies out of steel. That’s what happened during World War II when the country needed copper for the war effort. The steel coins weren’t popular.
Given all that, Congress might reconsider the future of the penny. The last efforts were in 1989 and 2001, but both congressional bills died quietly in committee.
We’d be happy to see the penny turn to into a museum piece. They do carry a handsome likeness of Abraham Lincoln, but let’s face it, he doesn’t need a coin – he’s on the $5 bill.
It’s time for Congress to consider putting the old one-cent coin out to pasture.
It could live on, for awhile at least, in our memory and language, such as “a penny for your thoughts,” “a penny saved is a penny earned,” and “a bad penny.”
