https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/11/13/businesses-face...
If there was a suitable and even less expensive metal, I think it might be reasonable to switch again. But if we have to rebuild coin handling to use a plastic penny, I think it's necessary to consider the costs and benefits of a vastly different material versus the costs and benefits of abandoning pennies.
The newer pennies are not really worth the effort as they are mostly zinc.
Ironically if they are no longer illegal to melt down (IANAL but I would think this is true?) they actually would be more worth it to scrap because of the negated risk.
I think however the problem would be the trouble in seperating the zinc from the copper, I think you would likely operate at a loss still but this is just a guess.
They're still worth $1 per lb., and you have to destroy them, anyway.
because the cost of seperation from the copper is greater than simply sourcing other materials.
The practicalities of their illegality then comes down to enforcement. Given the current executive branch's behavior related to enforcement of laws, that can mean anything from "melt them all down", to "don't do it", to "if our friends start doing it, it'll be legal, if our enemies start doing it, we'll enforce".
Also, pennies are still legal tender. Folks can take them to a bank or other venue and cash them in. They’re not “trash.”
FWIW my bank refuses to accept unrolled coins, long before this month's retirement of the penny.
As I understand it, coins are considered a government service. Banks and retailers pay to deal with them. Buying them from the public for face value actually saves them money.
Coinstar also often has zero commission options like gift cards that are an easy way to cash in extra change without paying fees.
In my childhood we'd hoard loose change then make a trip to the local po-dunk bank serving my neighborhood surrounded by corn fields, and even there they'd take our bucket of loose change and dump it into a counting machine for free.
It was a game to try guess the amount we'd get in paper cash...
Now you have to pay for this service at a grocery store using a cumbersome machine operated by Coinstar.
So this is long overdue.
But there is a wider point which i want to discuss. How long will physical cash last? I'm very fuzzy on this but i think in some of the Asian countries it is practically an endangered species. Tax people don't like large denomination notes. And virtually no legal big transactions take place in cash. America must profit massively from the fact that in many other countries dollars are the go to black market currency but that is a very singular advantage.
"A coin’s typical lifespan is 30 years. See https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-19-300.pdf, page 6."
Is there some item that would be problematic to round to $0.1? I suppose anything that is fractionally priced at ≤$0.05 is now would have a minimum purchase of 2. Items bought in bulk could be priced fractionally.
We already round off fractional pennies all the time, e.g. in securities market prices, tax calculations, gasoline prices, etc. That's not a problem. And any electronic purchase could be for fractional amounts - but why?
(Once upon a time, you probably could sell the idea to IT people by pointing out how much memory and bandwidth it would save.)
internet2000•5h ago
This is way too much spite for an article about coins. Lord.