What does the end of the penny mean? Here's what experts are saying

Indianapolis Star

6 hours ago

Penny for your thoughts? Or maybe they are worth a nickel now that the Treasury Department is following President Donald Trump's suggestion to stop making pennies.
Last month, the Treasury Department placed its last order of blanks – flat metal discs to make pennies – in a move set into motion by President Donald Trump in February. He argues that the coin costs more than 3 cents to produce (actually 3.69 cents, according to the U.S. Mint).
Now that we know it's curtains for the coin, many questions arise. What does the demise of the penny mean for consumers and collectors? Could the last pennies be valuable? Here's what we know.
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Doubtful. The U.S. Mint made about 3.2 billion pennies in 2024, according to its annual report, so there will be billions of 2025 pennies available. "There's nothing, statistically, that says they should become valuable," John Feigenbaum, publisher of rare coin price guide Greysheet and executive director of the Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG), a nonprofit organization composed of many of the nation's rare coin experts, told USA TODAY.
The coin's legacy could be akin to the 1976 bicentennial quarter, Feigenbaum said. "Everybody, at the time, was hoarding them (and) you couldn't find bicentennial quarters in change. Now people have plastic bags full of them and they're still worth 25 cents," he added.
However, the 2025 pennies could have an alternative value as an entry point to collectors. "This would surely spike demand … in other Lincoln pennies, like the ones that go all the way back to 1909," Feigenbaum said, adding that the Lincoln penny, which first featured the 16th president in that year, has had "quite a run."
Parents could get a Lincoln penny coin collecting book – options include those from Whitman Publishing, which also publishes Greysheet – and talk to their children about "American history, and who this Lincoln guy is and what would the different designs be all about," Feigenbaum said.
Not if you are hoping for them to be valuable. Just as there has been misleading hype about the value of some Lincoln wheat pennies, there may be misinformation about the increased value of 2025 pennies.
That's nonsense, Feigenbaum said. They are "not going to be" more valuable, according to Feigenbaum, who said he favored getting rid of the penny.
Maybe it's a good time to take all those coins gathering dust in a cup or piggy bank to the bank or a Coinstar machine. The average home has $60-$90 in coins at home, according to the Federal Reserve.
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Maybe. Not making pennies will nix out the more than $179 million it costs taxpayers to make them, based on figures from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the department formerly connected to Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
The U.S. Mint estimates that not making pennies will save $56 million in material costs, with additional savings from better and more efficient production, CNBC reported.
'For every penny that the United States government prints, we're actually losing money. So, it's a net cost to the federal government,' said Raymond Robertson, director of the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics and Public Policy at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, in a news release.
But the lack of pennies likely means more reliance on nickels, which cost even more to produce – 13.78 cents, the U.S. Mint says.
If the U.S. Mint makes more nickels, "It actually is going to increase costs for the government,' Robertson said. 'So, it's really not clear how much cost savings the government will realize by eliminating the penny," he added.
One of the bills (H.R. 1270) introduced in the House of Representatives (technically, Congress holds the power to eliminate a currency) also proposes getting rid of the nickel, too.
There is no time frame for prices to be set in five-cent increments – a move to change all those prices ending in 49 or 99 cents to the nearest five cents due to lack of pennies – but they will likely eventually, said Bill Maurer, dean of the School of Social Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, and director of UCI's Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion.
When there are not enough pennies for stores and other retailers to make change, businesses will need to round up or down, the Treasury Department said, according to The Wall Street Journal.
For the time being, merchants can keep prices as they are, but the 18% to 20% of Americans who rely on cash could eventually pay a rounded-up price, based on 5-cent increments. "If someone comes to you with cash, you round up, right? So if you're kind of doubly screwed if you're poorer," Maurer told USA TODAY.
Other countries that have eliminated low-denomination coins – Australia, Canada and New Zealand, among them – have resulted in differing outcomes, with some prices rounding up and some down, according to Money.com.
As the move to eliminate coin and paper currency continues, a publicly-accessible digital payment system will be needed so that consumers of all income levels can participate, Maurer said.
But the loss of physical currency removes a redundancy in the monetary system that's invaluable during disasters and emergencies, according to Maurer. "The more dependent on cashless methods of payment we become, the more risk we place ourselves when there are emergencies or disasters, because you need a well-functioning cash system," he continued.
Contributing: Fernando Cervantes, Daniel de Visé and Melina Khan.
Mike Snider is a reporter on USA TODAY's Trending team. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, X and email him at mikegsnider & @mikegsnider.bsky.social & @mikesnider & [e-mail]