Elon Musk and his DOGE boys once again have swung their mighty budget axe.  They now are seeking to chop down a familiar part of Americana.  The penny.  To many, in this age of tapping debit and credit cards and Venmo, the penny is just a nuisance to be well rid of.  But I’m old enough to appreciate the penny.

Once upon a time, people said, “Find a penny, pick it up, and all the day you’ll have good luck.”  Now people are too lazy to bend down.  In my youth there were things that you could buy for a penny.  Penny candy comes to mind.  There were candy stores with endless supplies of wax teeth, jawbreakers, and edible flying saucers.  Now they’re all but gone, at any price.  7-11 and WaWa stores now sell single tootsie rolls for 39 cents each.  So much for penny candy.

The powers that be have been trying to get rid of the penny for many years.  The latest attempt came when the DOGE boys announced that each penny we mint costs 3.7 cents to produce.  DOGE is doing good work, but that really wasn’t a revelation.  It’s cost more than one cent to make a penny since the 1970’s.  In fact, in 1974 the Mint experimented with an aluminum penny.  They were never produced for circulation.  I’ve handled aluminum coins.  They are the very embodiment of cheap crap.

Over the penny’s 232 year history, metal shortages and increases in metal values have caused numerous changes in the penny’s composition.  The penny was the first coin produced by the U.S. Mint in 1793.  From 1793 to 1857 the penny was the large cent, almost the diameter of a half dollar. Up to 1837 it was 100% copper.   In 1837, in the midst of a financial panic, the composition changed to 95% copper, 5% zinc and tin.

In 1857, the small cent was born.  This one (the Flying Eagle) was 88% copper and 12% nickel, giving the coin a white appearance.  A shortage of nickel during the Civil War changed the 1864 penny to bronze (95% copper, with zinc and tin).

That composition endured till World War II, when shortages of copper and tin caused the Mint to produce zinc coated steel pennies in 1943.  They lasted one year.  From 1944 to 1946 pennies were brass (95% copper, 5% zinc).  From 1947 to 1962 the bronze alloy returned.  From 1962 to 1982 they again were brass, the tin being removed.  Since 1982, pennies have been 97.5% zinc, with copper plating.

But now not even zinc is cheap enough to make minting pennies pay.  Congress unsuccessfully tried to cancel the penny in 2017.  Numerous other proposals to end the penny have been met with resistance.  Vending machine companies complained the loudest.  About the only machines that take pennies today are the supermarket self-checkouts.

Another defender of the penny is a man named Mark Weller, who represents an organization called Americans For Common Cents.  Is he fighting for the penny for its historical value or because he’s a coin collector like myself?  Hardly.  Mr. Weller is a lobbyist for the company that sells the Mint the zinc used to make the pennies.  So much for sentiment.

Until last year we were producing about 7 billion pennies a year, at an annual cost of more than $100 million over face value.  I can’t argue that that’s not a wasteful misuse of government money.  President Trump has ordered the Mint to stop producing pennies this year.  It would take an Act of Congress to cancel the penny altogether.

If pennies are no longer minted for circulation, they still could be produced for collectors.  New pennies could join the list of other coins we mint that few people ever see or use.  We minted 58 million Kennedy half dollars in 2023 and 37 million in 2024.  Ever get one in change?

Every year we mint millions of dollar coins in two varieties (Sacagawea and Presidential).  Only coin collectors ever see them, which is a shame, because if Americans would use a dollar coin, which lasts 20 years, we could stop printing $1 bills, which last 18 months.

But back to the penny.  It is estimated that there are 250 billion pennies in circulation.  That’s enough to give every American about 800.  And if you’re paying cash, how many do you need for the rare purchases requiring 3 or 4 pennies?    The Mint has produced over 150 billion pennies in the last 20 years, and pennies last from 20 to 30 years, so there have to be a lot more than 250 billion usable one cent coins out there.

The question is, where are all the pennies?  With fewer Americans using cash, are they in piggy banks or jars somewhere?  The point is, we need not cancel the penny outright.  We can just halt production while we make use of  the billions of coins already produced.

We need to enlist the American public to bring their pennies to banks to get them back into circulation.  During World War II there were metal and rubber drives.  Why not a penny drive?  If Trump and Musk ask Americans to help them save the government money it could work.  And there is precedent for such a plan.

Remember that I said the Mint experimented with aluminum pennies in 1974.  That’s because the price of copper caused people to melt pennies for the copper value.  There was a  penny shortage.  The Mint ramped up production, minting more than 100 billion pennies in 10 years.

In 1974 the U.S. Treasury Department called for pennies to be cashed in at banks to ease the shortfall.  Then Mint Director Mary Brooks put out the call for pennies, telling Americans “There are plenty of pennies.  But they are in the wrong places.”  For every $25 in pennies turned in to banks, the Treasury issued a Certificate of Appreciation.  I got one.

The same situation exists today.  There are plenty of pennies out there, but just in the wrong places.  I think I’ll give Treasury Secretary Bessent a call.