The U.S. appears poised to ditch the penny, with recent reports saying the U.S. Treasury made its final order of penny blanks in May. With no new blanks on the way, the U.S. Mint is reportedly producing the last new pennies the country may ever see.
You may feel inclined to rush out and purchase a few rolls of one-cent coins and stash them away, either to use to cover oddly-priced purchases or for a potential payout from collectors.
Generally speaking, you may not have to do either.
While a wind-down plan for the use of the penny hasn’t officially been released, it may be similar to the process followed in Canada, which parted ways with its penny in the early 2010s for the same reasons U.S. officials have expressed.
At the time, the Royal Canadian Mint essentially put the distribution process in reverse, collecting pennies from financial institutions and charities. Collected and turned-in pennies were melted down and their valuable metals were extracted.
Meanwhile, consumers started to see their cash transactions rounded to the nearest nickel. For instance, a $19.82 purchase becomes $19.80 while $19.83 becomes $19.85. Payments with checks or debit or credit cards are not rounded, however.
The U.S. appears likely to do the same, a Treasury spokesperson indicated to the Wall Street Journal.
Pennies remain legal tender in Canada, though you may be hard pressed to find them.
That does not, however, make them an immensely valuable collector’s item.
A decade after Canada stopped producing its penny, collectors said there was no notable spike in the coin’s value. Todd Sandham, owner of a coin and jewelry shop in Ontario, told Canadian outlet CTV News in 2023 that even someone who brought in a jar of pennies to sell would “get about a penny and a half for them.”
Experts at All About Coins in Salt Lake City recently told Nexstar’s KTVX they would expect the same to happen in the U.S.
“I don’t think that we’re ever going to see a day where like a 2024 penny is going to be worth so much more,” store clerk Casey Hackford-Peer explained. “Maybe in 200, 300 years, but not in my lifetime.”
In a 2022 report from the Federal Reserve, officials warned that “drastically reducing or ending the production of the penny” could lead to a “significant flowback of coin from consumers and businesses seeking to turn in their pennies.” The same report suggested, however, that reducing penny production could save the Mint up to $100 million annually.
A bipartisan bill to halt penny production was recently introduced by Senators Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah). It was one of a handful of bills that have been brought forth since President Donald Trump called one-cent coins “wasteful.”
In a statement to Nexstar last week, Merkley said he was “pleased” by the Treasury’s reported actions and said “ending penny production is the right thing to do.” He warned, however, that it should be done “the right way.”
“If President Trump is serious about ending this wasteful spending—with each penny costing 4 times more to mint than it’s worth — he should work with Congress to take up necessary legislation, like my bipartisan bill with Senator Mike Lee,” Merkley said. “It’s time to make sense, not cents.”
