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It’s been more than 230 years since the United States first produced the pennies that have been in circulation ever since. However, the coins could be facing extinction in the not-so-distant future as the U.S. Mint prepares to stop making them.
The English pound was the currency of choice when America was still a British colony, but the country that became the United States found itself exploring its options in the wake of the Revolutionary War.
The burgeoning nation initially adopted what was referred to as “Continental currency” during that conflict before Congress passed the bill that led to the creation of the United States Mint, which was officially formed in 1972 and started pumping out its first coins—pennies featuring the personification of “Liberty”—the following year.
Those one-cent coins underwent a number of changes in the following centuries; they were originally made of 100% copper before the mint began experimenting with alloys (they’re currently 97.5% zinc with a copper coating responsible for the rest of the contents), and they became the first coin to sport a president on the front when Abraham Lincolin was honored in 1909.
There was once a time when pennies were fairly valuable in the grand scheme of things, but inflation has made them increasingly worthless to the point where plenty of people began to question their purpose around 15 years ago when Americans learned it cost more than two cents to produce a coin that was still worth a single one (as of 2024, one penny cost 3.69 cents to make).
There have been some unsuccessful pushes to eliminate the penny from circulation, and while they’re still going strong, the writing is on the wall due to a recent development.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Mint has announced it has no plans to order any more of the blanks that are used to make pennies after they stamp out the most recent supply and will subsequently cease production as part of a cost-cutting measure officials estimate will save more than $56 million this year.
The Department of the Treasury says that development will mark the first phase of a plan to take pennies out of the equation in cash transactions where merchants will be eventually instructed to round up or down to the nearest nickel (if you’re curious, that five-cent coin currently costs more than 13 cents to make).
It’s about time.
Content shared from brobible.com.