The Penny is Dead
By Grace Retzlaff
After over 230 years of being around, the penny is no longer being made. Who will this affect, what does this look like, and how will it play out in the long run?
According to an article from the New York Times, titled The Penny Dies at 232, it states that “The American penny died on Wednesday in Philadelphia after being around for 232 years.”
What was the cause of this change, though? What led to pennies not being made anymore?
“The cause was irrelevance and expensiveness,” states the Treasury Department.
If we really think about it, when do we use pennies? There isn’t anything around anymore that you can buy for a penny. Even a penny itself costs three cents to make. If the cost of making a penny is more than the penny itself, the whole system seems pointless and absurd.
The penny was originally created in 1793 in Philadelphia by Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton was the first Secretary of the Treasury. He was also the author of the Coinage Act, which created the penny and its siblings of the penny.
According to the same article by the New York Times, it states that, “The penny was at first strictly a copper coin. In 1943, because of the need for copper for the war effort, it changed for a year to zinc-coated steel.”
Even though the penny is no longer being produced, it will not completely vanish for a while. There are around 250 billion pennies in circulation, and they will be out there for a very long time.
As the last pennies slowly disappear, how will the business give out change? They will have no other choice but to round to the nearest nickel
“We haven’t really felt the impact of pennies not being made anymore yet since they’re still in circulation,” Deb Sedlacek, the branch operation manager from Elkhorn Valley Bank in Pierce, states. “However, when pennies are no longer being circulated, we will have to start rounding up to the nearest nickel.”
“We no longer give customers pennies back, and the bank no longer gives us pennies,” Tom Behmer, a worker from Casey’s General Store, states. “But, we’re a big enough business that we don’t really feel an effect from it.”
Some are wondering, will the nickel be next? Like the penny, the nickel costs more than it is worth to make, costing more than a dime to produce.
