GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — According to the U.S. Mint, a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, it lost more than $85 million on the nearly 3.2 billion pennies it produced for 2024. It marked the 19th consecutive year that the penny cost more to make than its worth. And now, President Trump wants some change.
President Trump says he wants the Treasury Department to stop making pennies. He made the announcement Sunday citing the cost, and he is not the first to call this out. During his presidency, Barrack Obama signaled he would be willing to stop producing pennies, and he was joining a debate that had already been going on for decades.
And here's a penny for your thoughts: Our neighbor to the north started phasing out its 1-cent coin about a decade ago, and it's not just Canada. We are joining the ranks of New Zealand, Australia and the Netherlands, all of whom have phased out their lowest-valued coins. All those countries have moved on and not looked back. But will that be the case for America?
It's a debate that’s been coined and re-coined for years: Do we keep the penny?
"I do think we need the penny. If we get rid of the penny, then the nickel will be the next penny. It'll be all rounded," said Dan Diemer, owner of Diemer’s Coins, Jewelry & Collectibles.
Diemer thinks the penny should be left alone, because if not, “It will just decrease the value, because then everything will go to five cents, right?” Diemer said.
Benjamin Soldaat, owner of Grand Rapids Coins, disagrees. "I’m for this move because it costs about two and a half cents to make a penny currently," Soldaat said. "So no business can run losing those kind of margins.”
Soldaat thinks we should do away with the penny all together, like Canada did in 2013. "I think we're just following suit of what several other countries have done. For instance, Canada got rid of their penny and it doesn't seem to have created any big economic waves for them," Soldaat said.
Diemer and Soldaat tell me the current cost to make a penny is roughly three cents — triple its value.
"You got to count on the fact that about 84% of people currently use electronic methods of payment, so cash doesn't have the place that it did 10, 20, 50 or 100 years ago,” Soldaat said.
Topher Cook is part of the 84%. "I generally don't pay with cash, and so ... it doesn't really make a difference," Cook said.
Mom Mandy Miedema says she told her young boys that sometime in their life, the penny would go away.
"They're not like our most important thing in America, because we can use a debit card, because, like, a long time ago, people used pennies all the time, but nowadays, like I said, cards are getting a lot more popular," said Mandy Miedema's son, Dan Miedema.
Dan’s brother, Matthew Miedema, is less concerned with electronic forms of payment and more concerned with preserving the rich history of the penny. "You can collect them from different times, and my 1943 and 1944 coins can remind me of what was happening during that time,” Matthew said.
The first year of the cent was 1793. Since then, Soldaat thinks it’s lost its necessity, and it’s no longer worth the bang for your buck. "A lot of times people want what they can't have," Soldaat said. "And if you can't have a penny anymore, people are gonna want them.”
So, are you for the penny, like Diemer? "I just think it should be left the way it is, because then you just kind of decrease it until you get just to paper money,” Diemer said.
Or, are you okay with the production of pennies coming to a close, like Soldaat? "I think there'll be a benefit to the U.S. budget by not spending so much money on coinage that’s really, somewhat, become obsolete,” Soldaat said.
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