Pennies

“A penny saved is a penny earned.”

--Benjamin Franklin

When I come home and change into more casual clothes, I take the change out of my pocket and put it on top of my dresser. At some point, I separate out the pennies and put them in a cup on my dresser. When that cup is full, I empty the pennies into a larger can. Months later, when I get ambitious I put the pennies into paper rolls holding 50 of each and exchange them for paper bills and larger coins at the bank.

I hardly ever take pennies with me, but I feel good if I can use them for a purchase and feel annoyed if I get some more of them as change for a purchase.

The U.S. Mint officially calls the penny a “cent.” The U.S. Treasury officially names it the “one cent piece.”  The name penny is of British origin and some sources say it comes from the name of a seventh-century ruler of Britain named Penda.

The Origin and Cost of a Penny

U.S. pennies are copper in color, but they are more than 98 percent zinc in total composition. At various times, including World War Two, the government decided to use an aluminum mix for pennies because copper was needed for the war effort or to reduce costs because of an increase in the cost of copper.

The current penny has its beginnings in 1909 when the U.S. Mint began producing Lincoln pennies to commemorate his birth in 1809. The Lincoln monument adorned the reverse side of the penny for decades and in 2009, the Mint decided to use four different “B” sides for the penny and retain Lincoln’s portrait on the front.

It costs the government $0.0167 to manufacture and distribute each penny, so the coin is already a money loser. In 2013 it cost $55 million to manufacture nearly 3.5 billion pennies. A significant number of them are probably stored in jars, cans or cups by private citizens and are not in circulation.

Rounding and the Demise of the Penny

Many experts suggest that we should do away with penny and simply allow business to round up or down each purchase to the nearest 5 cents. There was some sentiment for the U.S. Congress to act on this in 2013 when the Canadian government did away with penny and made rounding the law.

A lot of business interests support this, saying that it will save money by reducing the time for cashiers need to make change. However, polls show that most consumers don’t support this idea and about three quarters of them favor keeping the penny. Consumers fear they will lose money if businesses are allowed to round change. However, a number of economists say that the overall effect of eliminating the penny and allowing rounding will not favor either the consumer or merchants.

A group called Americans for Common Cents (www.pennies.org)  opposes the abolition of the penny by the government. The group says its own member polls show 71 percent think keeping the penny will prevent price increases.

A Final Note About Pennies

My senior year in high school, I signed up to take a chemistry class. It turned out to be a good decision, but not necessarily for educational reasons. I attended a Catholic high school, but that school had just hired a lay teacher who had just graduated from college.  Her name was Carol Crawford and she was a very attractive brunette and a welcome change from the nuns and priests who taught most of my other classes. Also, when she paired each of us with another student as a lab partner, I felt like I had won the lottery. My partner was a very attractive classmate named Ginny. So, I actually looked forward to chemistry class a lot that year, but not because of the Periodic Table of Elements.

During a lab session dealing with acids, we were instructed that we could use acid to clean pennies. Ginny and I put a drop of acid (I don’t remember which one) on a penny and it developed a like-new shine in seconds. Ginny grabbed a few more pennies from her purse and dropped acid on them with the same result. We were amazed at the result and I suggested there might be a demand for “Ginny’s Pennies.” I always was a sucker for rhymes.

The moral of this story is that we didn’t see much value in pennies then as currency and there is not much value now because billions of them are not in circulation, but being stored in cans, jars and other types of containers in our homes. They are not in circulation, but they cost our government millions each year as billions more are minted.

This is just a thought about how the government might save millions each year. But now, my penny containers are getting full, so I’ve got to get some penny rolls and think about what I want to do with the money I’m about to get. Woo Hoo!