The U.S. mint ceased production of the penny on 12 Nov 2025 to save taxpayers $56 million since it currently costs 3.7 cents make a cent piece. This is disingenuous and obscures the real issue. The real issue isn’t that penny costing more than a cent to make, it’s the century-long erosion of the currency itself. Furthermore, this isn’t the first time the U.S. discontinued production of a coin due to inflationary pressures.
From 1793 to 1857, the U.S. monetary system used three decimal places with the coinage of a half cent piece. By the 1850s inflation increased the cost of production above its face value and make the coin less useful in everyday transactions.
Today’s penny was originally a 95% copper coin but switched to 97.5% zinc in 1982. Copper and zinc haven’t changed much over the decades, but something else changed the economics of minting our (now) smallest coin.
The systematic and progressive removal of precious and semiprecious metals from a nation’s currency is nothing new. Time flows like a river and history repeats itself (Square Co., Ltd) and humans have never learned when money stopped being backed by something of value it leads to disastrous results.
The Romans issued the denarius in the 3rd century B.C. and it circulated for over 500 years. Originally the coin contained 4.5 grams of silver at a purity between 95-98%. In time it would lose 95% of its silver content. By the end of the empire, inflation and starvation ravaged the Romans, family members were sold into slavery just to ensure their survival, elegant villas were abandoned and skills and technologies were forgotten.
The U.S. coinage act originally defined a dollar as 1 ounce of silver or 1/20 ounce of gold. But the gold was removed in 1933, silver in 1965, and as discussed the copper was finally removed in 1987. Our money looked the same, and at first spent the same but it was no longer money.
Without a tie to hard assets, our government spent the last 75 years printing money to ‘fix problems’, in doing so reducing the value of our currency. If it wasn’t for all this money printing, the penny would still be worth making.
Data show the nickel costs almost fifteen cents to produce. Perhaps it will be the next in line and the U.S. will again decide to remove a decimal point from its currency system. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
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