Could the penny really go away?
President Trump wants the Treasury Department to stop making new pennies. Only Congress has the power to do that, but what would happen if the United States got rid of the one-cent coin?
The U.S. Mint said it lost $85.3 million last year minting 3.2 billion new pennies. The agency said it costs 3.7 cents to make a one-cent coin.
To see just how devalued the penny is these days, WBZ-TV conducted an experiment. One hundred pennies were scattered on a busy sidewalk in Boston.
Dozens of people walked by for 15 minutes and not one person stopped to pick one up. When you're literally walking over money, it means it doesn't really buy you very much.
"Save your pennies"
But Massachusetts Treasurer Deb Goldberg wants to keep the penny. She believes parents should be using them to teach children about financial literacy.
"Save your pennies and they grow. And, I don't know, it just doesn't have the same ring to it saying, 'Save your nickels,'" Goldberg said. "From a former retailer's point of view, we used to price things $3.99, $12.99."
So, what would happen now?
"Well, with the whole concept of rounding, they're not going to round down to the closest nickel. They're going to round up," the treasurer said.
How many pennies are in the U.S?
But pennies aren't going anywhere. There are 420 billion of them in circulation, according to Stanley Chu, the manager at Stacks & Bowers Galleries in Boston, the oldest coin auction house in America.
He said pennies are the most collected coin in the world. Chu grew up sorting pennies at his family's bakery in Chinatown and that's where his passion for coin collecting began.
"It's affordable. It has some great history and it's America!," Chu said.
He points out that technically the U.S. Mint does not make a "penny," that word comes from our British ancestors because it's the nickname for the British "pence."
The U.S. Mint makes "cent coins," even though banks still refer to them as pennies.
Pennies could become more valuable
Ironically, Chu says that for numismatists (coin collectors or experts) like himself, getting rid of the "Lincoln head cent coin" is going to make it more valuable to collectors.
"When President Trump announced that he might do away with the cent, it drove up prices. Everybody's like, 'This might be the last year, we're going to start collecting them,'" he said.
Nowadays, more destinations like Fenway Park have become cash-free and bills and coins are slowly becoming a thing of the past.
"I can see this as a natural ramp into cashless, what they call frictionless, touchless-type transactions," said financial technology expert Peter Tran.
Goldberg mourns the inevitable loss of quaint penny-related traditions, saying "don't take away my lucky penny!"
Pretty soon, luck may be all the penny is good for.
If the penny goes away in the United States, it will join a long list of other nations, including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Slovakia and Sweden.
This would not be a first in America. The U.S. got rid of the half-cent back in 1857.
