After faithfully serving Americans since 1787, the penny is on its way to retirement. The United States Treasury announced it won’t place any more orders for penny blanks. That means once current supplies run out, new pennies will not be introduced into circulation.
The Washington Post reported that the Treasury placed its final order for blanks this month with expectations that it will run out by early 2026. You can keep spending pennies as normal after that. But at some point, businesses will have to start rounding up or down to the nearest 5 cents for cash transactions.
Why is the penny getting the axe? Well, according to the U.S. Mint’s 2024 annual report, pennies cost nearly 4 cents to produce and distribute. Part of this is due to rising material costs. Pennies are primarily made of zinc, and its price per metric ton has more than doubled since 2000.
Over the years, penny production has decreased anyway. In 2024, the Mint only made 3.2 billion pennies, compared to about 11 billion each year in the 1990s. But last fiscal year, the Mint still lost $85.3 million on the pennies it produced. Per the Post, the agency estimated that it will save $56 million a year from reduced material costs.
“Given the cost savings to the taxpayer, this is just another example of our administration cutting waste for the American taxpayer and making the government more efficient for the American people,” a Treasury spokesperson told Axios in a statement.
Talks about ditching the penny have been around for awhile. For example, former Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew recommended suspending its production in 2016. Americans have also grown more favorable to the idea, potentially because the penny’s use in our daily lives has decreased. Per YouGov, about a third of Americans never spend pennies, with adults under 30 using them the least.
Back in January, DOGE took aim at the penny, and, a month later, Trump followed up with a Truth Social rant about “wasteful” pennies, writing, “I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let’s rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it’s a penny at a time.”
To be fair to the penny, rising production costs have hit all coins. For example, a quarter cost 25% more to make in 2024 than the year before (compared to the penny’s 17% increase). And, like the penny, nickels are also more expensive to produce and distribute than they’re actually worth.
Ditching one-cent pieces isn’t unheard of. New Zealand and Australia discontinued theirs in 1989 and 1992, respectively, and Canada stopped producing pennies in 2012. The U.S. has discontinued other coins before, with the most recent being the $20 golden Double Eagle coin.
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