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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Abraham Lincoln copperheads are heading for extinction. Like the dodo, they won’t be able to reproduce and will eventually become curiosities instead of real money.
For over 230 years, the penny has circulated through American cash registers, kiddies’ cakes and under cushions.
Find a penny, pick it up. It will bring you lots of luck... but not for its own survival as it joins the like of the American half-cent, two-cent, and twenty-cent pieces, production of which ceased in 1933.
The United States is not the first country to eject the one-cent piece from its currency due to the expense of manufacturing; for years each penny has cost the U.S. Mint more than face value to produce.
Then demand for all denominations of currency precipitously dropped in recent years with consumers’ ever-increasing reliance on credit and digital payments.
While inflation rendered penny candy, penny-anything, obsolete. Rising costs – each copper now costs nearly 4 cents to make – make their ongoing manufacture impractical.
Because individually worth so little, they made up more than half of circulating coin production. Definitely a loss leader destined for the midden of modern history.
With an estimated 300 billion in current circulation and a projected annual savings of $56 million, the Treasury pulled the plug on November 12, 2025.
The American one-cent coin, RIP, age 232.
Or not. For now, pennies will just roll on. Each is one tough little sucker and, barring being battered flat under train wheels or victimized in other juvenile hi-jinks, has a life expectancy of 30 years and more. Collectors seeking to capitalize on increasing rarity will preserve some in pristine condition but, since their value depends on avoiding the blemishes of rough-and-tumble common usage, these will functionally be out of circulation.
Although, cashless transactions will still be calculated to the penny, banks may be panicking because commercial customers still need lots of cents to make change in their day-to-day operations. And the policies for rounding cash sales up or down have yet to be put in place. Along with consumer acceptance.
Even if goods are priced in full-dollar increments, there’s that pesky tax to pay, ensuring that about half of all cash customers will feel gypped.
A penny has always been worth one cent but, in 1793 it would buy you a cookie or a candle. Today??
Other than the BOGO promotion variant – Buy-One-Get-One-for-Just-A-Penny-More deal, American copper-clad coins are as likely to fill in for tiddly-winks or end up in the toe-end of a sock for a homeowner’s improvised sap in states where Stand-Your-Ground self-defences by gun laws are frowned upon.
In recent history, the 99-Cent-Only stores were probably the best of their breed, with their electric blue and pink signage welcoming savvy shoppers to take advantage of savings passed-along from the chain’s scooping up of end-of-line and end-of season price knockdowns.
But as 99¢ grew to 99.9¢ and then some prices bloating to $1.99 and $4.99 and $7.99, as well as facing strengthening competition from Chinese- and Vietnamese-manufactured goods, the company could no longer turn a profit with their existing business model.
The U.S. is in good company in dodo-ing its coinage to banish red ink from its accounts. Sweden stopped production of its 1-öre and 2-öre coins in 1972. New Zealand took 1- and 2-cent coins out of circulation in 1990, Australia in 1992. Canada ditched its penny in 2012.
When other countries have eliminated low-value coins, the ate of next-smallest denomination is often at risk. So American nickels and dimes may now have a price on their backs.
Today’s nickels are 25% nickel and 75% copper, both increasingly valuable metals, and costs close to 14 cents each with labor and ancillary expenses before making it into your pocket.
The use of silver in dimes and quarters ceased in 1965 but the nickel and copper components of the ten-cent piece are less than half that for a five-cent coin by weight, for an aggregate outlay of 5.2 cents – providing comforting black ink for the U.S. Mint.
The ubiquitous quarter, weighing in at two-and-a-half times the dime, costs more than its skinnier sibling but, even at two-and-a-half times the cost thus turning a hefty profit for Uncle Sam.
However, there are other serious considerations money mavens must ponder. Although pay phones are now anachronisms, what about all the vending machines in service that are calibrated to the weight and shape today’s coins?
Conclusion? The United States nickel is not long for this world.
The probability of rounding up or down is ultimately a coin toss for the consumer, better than Vegas odds. When New Zealand eliminated its 5-cent coin in 2006, researchers found that cumulative prices actually went down, not up.
Of greater concern in the fifty states is that phasing out cash transactions in general could be yet more drawback, impacting low-income people more harshly than their more solvent peers who since many don’t have credit ratings and bank accounts, and are already being victimized by the payday loan industry.
Unless the United States seizes this as an opportunity to re-establish free post office accounts... doubtful, unfortunately, since the purveyors of these savings are focussing gung-ho on transferring wealth from the poor to the rich.
Going back to those slot machines, so named because that’s where people dropped their coins rather than the metal monsters sucking up bills, and long before video games and smartphone apps, penny arcades represented America’s first form of affordable public entertainment.
Early slot machines dispensed everything from gum and candy to tokens. Tokens became a cunning ploy to avoid existing gambling laws.
Generations enjoyed losing their earnings one cent at a time to games of skill and chance. Penny arcades epitomized mindless fun for the family and paved the way for today’s digital gaming culture.
The “one-armed bandit” acquired its monicker from both the side lever resembling an arm and its tendency to steal patrons’ money, with losers outnumbering jackpots by huge margins.
Of course, those one-armed bandits have fallen prey to ubiquitous inflation and online apps equally eager to take people’s money so, for the most part, penny slots and the associated terminology are just memories.
Especially with plutocrats celebrating a tax bonanza courtesy of the Billionaires’ Bountiful Budget Bill while the rest of us won’t see one red cent.
