Penny for a Thought?
Penny for a Thought?
Sienna Chitwood
As of November 12, 2025, the production of the penny was officially stopped. The reasoning behind the end of the penny was the overall
cost of production. The average penny cost 4 cents each to make. Pennies are very commonplace in the 21st century. Everywhere you look there would be that lucky penny on the street to lose change in your center consul. Now pennies are no longer going to be in circulation!
The United States Treasury was told to stop producing the penny by U.S president Donald Trump. The U.S Treasury department is in charge of the U.S.’s finances including the Internal Revenue Service also known as IRS and printing the money the U.S uses today. The disappearance of the penny will most likely increase the use of other coins like the nickel; however, the production of the nickel is more costly to make rather than the penny. As CNN.com states, “According to the latest annual report from the US Mint, each penny cost 3.7 cents to make, including the 3 cents for production costs, and 0.7 cents per coin for administrative and distribution costs. But each nickel costs 13.8 cents.” As the money adds up this might make the nickel be subject to the next subject to elimination.
The explanation of the new policy from a BBC.com article says that the United States president Donald Trump stated publicly in his Truth Social account “Let’s rip the waste out of your great nation's budget, even if it's one penny at a time.” That ‘waste’ that Trump is talking about has been around since 1787, although, it was not always called the penny nor did it originally have Lincoln on it after the Coinage act in 1792; an act that made the penny a part of the American currency thanks to Benjamin Franklin. In 1793, they became a staple in our currency and the face of the penny was not originally our 16th president; it was a female figure who was wearing a native headdress until Lincoln’s face took over the pennies in 1909. This was in celebration of his 100th birthday. The materials that go into making the penny like the face of the penny have varied over the years, before the year 1982 pennies consisted of 95% copper and 5% zinc/tin but after 1982 to the recent discontinuation was made from 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper, this change was due to the fact that the overall face value of copper exceeded the cost value of the one cent so the drastic change was made much like the most recent change
Although the cost of making the penny overrides the overall cost of the value, so do most coins in the American currency. In fact, many cost more to make than the penny.