The common cent

By Brandan Moe

I was recently down at the gas station and noticed how no one including me wants the penny anymore. The penny has become one of society’s outcasts, relegated to the dish at the check out counter, the center console of your car or even just thrown on the ground. The penny gets little respect these days.

In 1793, the United States of America was trying to establish itself among the nations of the world. President Washington was made aware what an urgent matter it was for the US to have a stable system of coinage. The US penny, named after the British penny or pence was first minted as the US penny around 1787. Pennies in the US were first pressed in copper.

Is that old penny worth something? One of the most expensive pennies is the 1943 penny and is made of real copper it’s worth about $80,000.00. Copper you ask? But weren't the 1943 pennies all steel and coated with zinc due to the need to save copper for the war effort? Yes all but the first 12 minted which were minted from the copper already in the machine the rarest penny known to still exist in any form is the 1793. There are only four that we know of and that's why you are unlikely to ever find one, unless you find the missing 5th penny, if there even is one. These four are each valued at around $275,000.00.

It’s been argued that inflation has eaten away at the value of the penny to such a degree that it no longer facilitates commerce. The fact that the penny is still in circulation does not mean that it is useful. The penny is now worth so little that nobody even picks it up off the ground, despite the old "lucky penny" adage.

The US mint produces about 7 billion pennies every year roughly half of all coins made each year, at a cost of over $100 million dollars. About one-third of this money is used to pay for the zinc that pennies are made out of, which is why the zinc industry is lobbying to keep the penny in production.

Others argue that the most obvious economic effect of removal of the penny would be the inflationary pressures it creates. Proposals to move to the nickel as the lowest denomination coin create public anxiety about high inflation. Imagine the inconvenience to shoppers at the cash register. Consumers, expecting merchants to round down rather than up, might also feel cheated. A system of rounding would be regressive and hurt those least able to afford it because they make more small cash purchases

At first I had thought the penny was useless but after really thinking about it the penny deserves a lot more respect. It helps to keeps inflation down for one. Without it we wouldn’t have any ninety nine cent stores either. I also realized something though. If we got rid of the penny and rounded up or down to the nearest five cents. Every cash register in the Untied States would have to be reprogrammed or a new one would have to be bought that does the rounding. I know many store owners that would rather put up with the nuance of the penny then “change”. The penny does cost 1.7 cents to produce but its economic importance outweighs the extra cost to produce it. Oh and if your thinking about hording pennies and melting them for the copper it turns out the government has made it illegal to do so. As an interesting note though, real copper pennies are those from 1909 to 1982. The current melt value of a copper penny is 0.245223. So maybe it’s worth it to pick that penny up or keep your change.