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They may still be as lucky as ever, but they cost more to produce than they're worth. The U.S. Mint reported losing more than $85 million last year making the coin. Now President Trump has added his voice to previous bipartisan calls to stop minting it. But it would be up to Congress to make change. Is it time for the penny to go? Would you miss it? We look at the cultural and economic significance of the coin right after this news.
Welcome to Forum. I'm Meena Kim. When I was a kid, I happily scoured the sidewalk for coins, including pennies. For one cent, I could get a single gummy bear at my convenience store in St. John's, Newfoundland. So more pennies meant more gummy bears.
Canada has, since 2012, stopped making its penny after the cost of minting it outweighed the coin's value. And it's a proposal that's been made in the U.S. for decades now that the coin costs more to mint than it's worth, most recently in a directive by the president.
So why has it been so hard to get rid of the penny? And would you miss it if we did? What connection do you have to the one cent coin? You can tell us by calling 866-733-6786, emailing forum at kqed.org or posting on Blue Sky, Instagram and other socials at KQED Forum. Joining me is Frank Lee Holt, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Houston and author of When Money Talks. Frank, so glad to have you on Forum.
Glad to be here. Thank you. And Jacob Goldstein is with us, former co-host of Planet Money, now host and executive producer for Pushkin Industries and author of Money, the true story of a made up thing. Welcome back to Forum, Jacob.
Hi, it's good to be back. So Jacob, obviously I cannot get a gummy bear for a penny anymore or much of anything at all. Can you get one for like a nickel? Do they still sell loosey gummy bears in your own town? Like one at a time. No. But in 2014, you really tried hard, right? You went around Manhattan and tried to see if there was something you could buy for a penny. Remind us what happened.
Nobody wanted my penny, in short. People were a little bit offended. They felt like we were playing a prank on them, which, you know, it was a study, let's say. There was the fruit vendor on the corner, the fruit cart guy. I was like, can I buy a
a grape for a penny and he wouldn't sell it to us. The closest we got, there was a hardware store where we found just like a washer, just a little metal washer that cost two cents. And the guy said, usually I would just give this to you. And we basically made him sell it to us for two cents. So that was as close as I got. Yeah. A lot of people were saying the transaction cost more for them than, you know, the
The value of the penny. So a penny is basically worthless. I mean, that's what we're underscoring here. And it would be impractical to use anyway, right? For buying almost any regularly priced thing.
Yes, it's worthless. And importantly, it gets a little bit more worthless every day, right? Like on one level, the story of the penny is how we don't really notice inflation. I mean, you notice it when eggs get more expensive or whatever. But this idea that every day, every year, a penny is worth less and less. I mean, that story you're referencing, I did it about a decade ago. So a penny today is worth like...
roughly a third less than it was then. And we don't quite feel it on that level, but it's true. Yeah. Frank, you've described this as a coin, I think, falling out of its Goldilocks zone. What do you mean by that? Well, it
Every monetary system establishes a certain number of denominations that work well for the consumer. And that's kind of like a Goldilocks zone. Coins are paper money that's not too big and not too small, but just right. The United States established the first Goldilocks zone back in 1792 with the first Coinage Act.
And it created coins, large gold coins, all the way down to the half cent, which we had until 1857. And then the half cent was decommissioned and the penny began to hold up the bottom end of the Goldilocks zone. But as Jacob has described in his forays out into the world,
the Goldilocks zone has kind of dropped the penny out. It is now economically speaking, uh,
No longer just right. It's too small to serve the function for which it was created. Right, right. And now President Trump is joining previous calls by lawmakers. President Obama even supported getting rid of the penny to stop minting it. In fact, directing Treasury Secretary Scott Besson to stop producing it because it's, what, 3.7 cents to make the one cent coin and at a loss of 85 million last year? Yeah.
Jacob, I mean, why does it cost so much to produce?
I mean, we might ask, why does it cost so little? Right? Like, you got to dig up the, it's mostly zinc. You got to dig up the zinc and a little bit of copper and you got to put it all together. You got to send it to the mint in Philadelphia or Denver and they stamp it and they make it a penny and they put it on a truck and they take it to the Fed and then it goes to a bank. And you can do all that for just 3.7 cents, right? Like, that's really cheap. The problem is that one cent is nothing. That's the problem. Yeah. Yeah.
So can President Trump do that? Can he, through a directive, do that? Or does it require an act of Congress? So this is an interesting legal question. And
I think the answer is not clear, like with a fair bit of what's going on right now. I mean, there's two different things going on here that I'm aware of. Right. One is the Constitution very clearly gives the power of of the coinage to Congress. Right. So that is the case that says it's not up to the president. It's up to Congress.
There is, though, this line in the code that basically says it's up to the Treasury Secretary to decide how many of each denomination of coin to produce, basically, right? So certainly it seems clear that the president doesn't have the authority to say the penny shall cease to exist from American life. But maybe because the...
Secretary of the Treasury is appointed by the president and the mint answers to the secretary of the treasury. Maybe the president can say, secretary of the treasury, stop making new pennies. Right. That is that is what the president has said he would do. And it it's plausible. It's plausibly legal, but I don't know.
Well, let me go to some calls. Carl and Sebastopol is on the line. Carl, you're up. Yeah, so I think I just wanted to say that I think our lack of ability to get rid of the penny is just an example of a problem in our government where it's just hard to get anything done, whether it's high-speed rail or building housing, which are more complex. But if we can't even find a way to get rid of the pennies,
which should be obvious, means we haven't given government officials the power to make good judgment and do things on our behalf. Carl, thanks for sharing that. Carl, it sounds like, is ready to get rid of the penny. And yes, the penny has come, Frank, to symbolize government waste. But I want to ask you this.
What would you want us to appreciate about the penny, given your study of it? If there were to be an end to the penny very soon, what would you include in its obituary? I appreciate that question because
I was a little concerned early on how many times we used the word worthless when we talked about the penny. And yes, if we're speaking in purely economic terms, perhaps the penny has lost its purchasing power. But the penny is never going to be worthless. In 3,000 years from now, it will not be worthless because a coin is never just a coin. It's never just a monetary instrument.
So, you know, I think if the poor little penny has got to die, and perhaps it does, then it does deserve a heartfelt obituary that acknowledges what it's done for us in the past and in the present and the future. I mean, the penny's life now stretches back 232 years to that first coinage act in 1792.
Pennies bear the stamp of every year since then, except one, 1815. There were no pennies produced because of a wartime shortage of copper.
But that's a long and adventurous life for the penny, during which it's undergone all sorts of changes. And it's been reduced in size. The design has changed considerably. And since 1909, the penny has dedicated its life to celebrating the life of Abraham Lincoln. And it was the first American coin to celebrate an American president. And I think it's done that job very well. And
I'm not sure that that job is quite complete. When you think about it, long after Lincoln's face has eroded from Mount Rushmore and long after the Lincoln Memorial in Washington has sort of collapsed into ruin, there'll still be images of both of them that survive thanks to the penny.
It's the one thing that will then preserve for us Lincoln's face and Lincoln's memorial, not to mention all the other things, the U.S. motto and so forth, for us down through the ages. So I think that it's done an important job. It's not just economic. It's cultural. It's political. It's artistic. It's religious. It's social. It's even military in nature. Do you
Do you have a story, a personal story related to the penny? Yes. I mean, when I wrote my book called When Money Talks, I tried to understand money.
how coins function in our society. But I did this not as an economist, but as an historian and as an archaeologist. And so I think of coins as messengers. They were the earliest means of mass communication invented by human beings. Long before we had this marvelous radio,
The only way to send out information to large numbers of people over large distances was to stamp that information on coins.
And so I think of a penny as a tiny, durable, mobile disk of information technology. And it's specifically designed to capture, store, and disseminate information. And it does that very well. And the information it disseminates tends to be of a very official nature, you know, government proclamations and so forth. So the penny is...
is a communications technology second to none in human history, at least since the 7th century BCE when coins were first invented. So, Jacob, do you know from your penny reporting where public opinion sort of stands on the penny? I mean, you know, the one survey I saw was funded basically by Big Penny. It was funded by this nonprofit group that's funded by the company that sells the zinc blanks. So,
I don't trust that. Nobody should trust that, right? I mean, we should get rid of the penny. I'm just going to say it. The penny is an easy call. We could debate the nickel. I was going to ask you, what would you like to see? Get rid of the penny. As the caller said, I agree with the person who called in, which is, by the way, the same thing President Obama said a decade ago, a little more, when the penny was worth a third more than it is now. It's a metaphor for government not being able to do an obvious thing. All right. I'll tell you.
I'll take any callers who want to argue with me. Let's argue about the penny. It's an easy call. Jacob lays it down. Jacob Goldstein, host of the podcast, What's Your Problem? Thanks so much for coming on with us, Jacob. Oh, sure. All right, listeners, we'll have more about the penny and whether or not it's time to see the penny go and whether you'd miss it if it did go. Stay with us. This is Forum.
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You're listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. We're talking about pennies this hour. The U.S. Mint reported losing more than $85 million last year producing the coin. And now President Trump has added his voice to previous bipartisan calls to stop minting it. But listeners, are you ready to see the penny go?
And what would you miss about it if it did? Our guest Frank Holt wrote an obituary to The Penny. If you were writing The Penny's obituary, what would you include? What questions do you have about the impact of stopping penny production? You can email forum at kqed.org. Find us on Blue Sky Facebook, Instagram, and threads at kqedforum. You can call us at 866-733-6786, 866-733-6786.
6-7-8-6. And Ron writes, more than a decade ago, I no longer accepted pennies in the change from a purchase. Joining us now is Jay Zagorski, professor of economics at Boston University Questrom School of Business and author of the upcoming book, The Power of Cash. Jay, thanks for coming on Forum.
Thanks for having me on Forum. So we were talking earlier about how President Trump gave an instruction to the Treasury Secretary to end production of the penny. But OK, so there are some legal questions around whether or not the president can do that. But let's say no one challenges that order. What would need to happen next? So let's assume no one challenges that order. What economists will tell you is that there's two very important words in the world. And those two words are supply and demand.
And let's assume the president gets rid of the supply of pennies. That doesn't mean he gets rid of the demand for pennies. Now,
We're talking right now, or excuse me, the listeners right now are listening to a San Francisco radio station, which is not an OT, a hotbed of Trump activism. And I could see a lot of people in San Francisco organizing something like demand your penny day as an attempt to embarrass the president. So you can get rid of the supply of pennies, maybe with an executive order. I don't believe you can.
Um, but you don't necessarily get rid of the demand for pennies and there could be an artificial increase in demand for pennies just to embarrass the president. Well, who currently demands pennies? Who wants pennies or needs pennies the most that the mint has produced billions of them on an annual basis? So the most important thing is while the mint has been producing billions of them, they used to produce about 5 billion pennies annually, uh, a number of years ago. And, uh,
they're actually down rather dramatically. The mint production of pennies has been cut roughly in half over the last 30 years or so. And so far in 2025, they've only made about a half million pennies. And what's really interesting is every month,
The Mint releases production figures. And in January, they said they made a quarter of a million pennies. In February, they said they made a quarter of a million pennies. And the president's tweet came out, or his mention on Truth Social came out. And it's like the Mint is still making pennies. There's nothing on the Mint website that says, oh, we stopped making pennies. So it's going to be interesting in the next month or two to see actually if production has stopped yet.
Because sometimes, you know, you put things out there on social media and it might get ignored. Let me go to caller Phil in Burlingame. Hi, Phil, you're on. Hi. So I'm both a programmer and an accountant. And, you know, pennies aren't going away in accounting systems or the IRS. Right.
Or, you know, my bills. So, you know, getting rid of the penny, isn't that related to the actual underlying numeric system of our financial system? Are we going to truncate? Are we going to I mean, is that worth more than eighty five million dollars? I see. So, yeah, what the impact is.
So Phil actually has a really good point. And there's two things. One, the question is,
Does the Department of Government Efficiency, are the savings they're recording imaginary? So let's assume we eliminate the pennies and we save that $85 million. The country loses $18 million last year making nickels. If suddenly there's an incredible need for nickels, they might be losing more than 85 million. And that's because nickels cost the government about 13 cents to make a five cent coin. So you're losing eight cents.
Which would you rather lose, $0.08 on a nickel or $0.02 on a penny? I know what I'd rather lose. Well, I think Mark has a similar concern. Mark and Sanrafel, you're on.
Yes, he just answered my question, which was to bring up the nickel, which as a percentage loses more than the penny. And then I guess my follow on question would be, if you get rid of the penny and the nickel, what do we start rounding transactions to the half dollar? Thanks, Mark. So yeah, should we then stop producing nickels to Jay?
So Mark brings up a very, very important point, which is why I don't think you can get rid of the penny via a tweet or a truth social post.
The reason why Barack Obama a number of years ago wanted to get rid of the penny but didn't is that it takes an act of Congress to actually push through this idea of rounding, to tell all businesses they have to round, either to a nickel, to a dime, to 20 cents, whatever the value is. You just can't say I'm not going to make pennies without actually passing a law that tells businesses how they have to change the actual change you get from a payment or from a bill. So...
Do you think that economically it makes sense to stop minting the penny? Or does it just make more sense to maintain the status quo? What do you think, Jay? I'm in favor of maintaining the status quo because I'm one of these people who really push that society should continue to use both cash and coins. And you can't use paper money. You can't use cash without the ability to make change in coins.
And if the penny is going away on its own then there's no real reason to have this big debate over saving 85 million or not 85 million Because in my mind there's no requirement that the government is supposed to be running a profit All right. I just there's lots of places like the post office doesn't run a profit. Should we get rid of the post office? You know, the park system doesn't run a profit. Should we get rid of our national parks? I
And even with the penny, even with the mint losing $85 million on the penny, last year it made $100 million of profit and gave that money back to the treasury. And so how is it possible? How did it make the $100 million? Oh, it makes a lot of money on quarters. Right.
And also on collectibles, right? It makes money on collectibles or twos, things like that. But the idea, basically, it doesn't cost that much difference to make a penny, a nickel, a dime. A lot of it's labor. Yes, there is the composition, whether you're using zinc or some of the other materials. So there is some difference in the blanks. But basically, to press a quarter is not really that much different than to press a nickel or a dime.
Well, Jesse writes, pennies serve an excellent purpose for me. At least they bring back fond memories of my childhood in the 70s. So my cousins and I would place pennies on the railroad tracks across the street from our grandparents' house. We love to see the coins get smashed flat or melded into the track itself. If this isn't an example of resilience, I don't know what is. Speaking of resilience, Frank, you have, I think, done some calculation work.
around just how many pennies exist, probably in people's jars and drawers in their homes, right? What do you estimate that to be? Well, people have about $68 worth of loose change in their house all across America. And Jay's right, too. It's not so much a manufacturing problem as a circulation problem. The problem is that
Pennies, we have plenty of pennies. There are 140 billion pennies out there capable of circulating, but they don't. Now, one of the things that I've tried to do is think about, if I'm writing that obituary, as you mentioned, as in any life, the penny bears some responsibility for its own fate because it's so good at avoiding circulation.
It's they they find ways to hide out in sock drawers and jars in our homes. And so if you think about it, I think about this in terms of why don't pennies want to circulate? And I know it sounds odd to to speak of an inanimate object in that way. But, you know, scientists do it all the time. The biochemist Jacques Monod, Nobel laureate.
used to ask himself, what would I be thinking if I were an electron and a chemical reaction? So I asked myself, what am I doing if I'm a penny? Why do I want to be in the jar in someone's closet rather than doing my job, which is circulating out there in commerce? And it's because coins don't want to circulate. Circulation is dangerous for the coins' memes, those
There's cultural equivalent of a biological gene. If a coin circulates, it gets dinged, bent up, worn out, and eventually it's recalled, melted down. It destroys those memes and can't pass them on to another generation. And as a result of that, coins have developed an extraordinary ability to
hide out, to colonize nuisance boards inside our closets and things of that type. They're perfectly designed in terms of Darwinian evolution. They're round.
Coins don't have to be round. There are lots of coins that weren't made round, and people think they're round because of vending machines, but coins, long before vending machines, coins tended to become round. The penny loves that shape. When you drop pennies, they bounce and they roll, and they circle around behind things. If you've ever been in a grocery checkout line and someone spilled a handful of change, that stuff is like rabbits scattering when a wolf shows up.
up. They race around, they go and they hide, and a certain number of them are going to be successful. They're not going to be retrieved. And so that's what coins like pennies are all about. And I think that that survival strategy is, that's why we've reached this point where the coin has become a little bit selfish in avoiding circulation. But if I can close on this point,
And pennies don't see the end coming. No one ever does. They've been magnificently successful for a long time, but they're like dinosaurs. Pennies have been resilient. They've resisted all these changes that have come along. But
I think of Donald Trump and Doge as the penny's asteroid about to bring about an extinction event that's going to stop numismatic evolution in its tracks. I'm not in favor of that, but I think that's the vision that I have. The penny is going to go extinct eventually, and then the nickel. And it's a matter of time then for the other denominations as well. Yeah.
Well, we're talking with Frank Holt, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Houston about the cultural significance of the penny. And we're talking with Jake Zagorski, a professor of economics at Boston University Questrom School of Business about the economic significance of the penny.
And we're talking with you, our listeners, if you're ready to see the penny go and what you would miss about it if it did go and questions you have about the impact of stopping penny production. And Jay, we're getting quite a few questions on sales tax. So this listener writes, if pennies are no longer made, how does that affect sales tax, which is often in penny increments? It seems like people would pay more just to even out the tax payment.
Yes. The problem is that we have all these different types of sales taxes, city taxes, state taxes, things like that, which when you look at nice...
numbers on the shelf, like a $2 item, you walk over and it's, oh, it's $2.07 because of the taxes. These would have to be rounded also. And the whole idea of rounding is that half the time the government gets a little bit beat on the taxes and half the time they make out on taxes. So in general, it's not going to have a big impact on total collections at the city or state level.
Another listener writes, I'm thinking we need to get rid of pricing products at 99 cents to keep people from thinking things are cheaper. And I guess also, if you are trying to get people to use fewer pennies because you get rid of minting them, not to make things 99 cents anymore.
How would this affect pricing?
whether or not the penny exists. Steve on Discord writes, and I think this is related to rounding, would it become another mechanism to concentrate wealth upwards? Who really cares if they pay one cent more per transaction? Well, the guys who get every one of those cents on every transaction throughout all of the USA.
Um, that's a hard one. It's a hard one because, uh, because of rounding and the way, uh, sales taxes go. Yes, there will be a slight bit of increase. Uh, but in general, once again, half the time, if rounding was truly fair, half the time rounding would round down and half the time rounding would round up.
Norman writes, I would hate to see the penny go because the penny is a testament to the strength of the dollar. Yes, we got rid of the half penny, but a whole one is different. It would be inflationary and it's well worth the 85 million annual cost to keep the dollar as the most reliable and stable world currency. This is too nuanced for the current administration to understand. Let's not be short-sighted. Let's not give something up when we don't even know its value. Is Norman right, Jay?
I'd agree Norman's right, but Norman and all the other people that have sent in messages so far are showing there's actually incredible support for the penny. Right now, we haven't heard that many penny haters out there. Yes, there are. Go ahead on the internet. There's many people who the penny infuriates. But large numbers of people think about the penny very fondly. Well, Chris might be for getting rid of the penny. Chris in Oakland, you're on.
Right. Well, I'm not for it or against it, but here's the thing. Get rid of the penny, you're going to have nickels. Nickels cost more than a nickel to make, so we'd be in the same boat, right? Yeah. So why not update a penny, revalue it up to a nickel? Can we just revalue our coins like that, Jay? And would that solve the problem? Act of Congress. We could do anything with an act of Congress. That's true. The problem is as...
As Frank pointed out, there's a lot of pennies in circulation. And suddenly if you have $60 worth of change sitting behind your dresser, that $60 would suddenly be worth five times as much if it's primarily pennies in that jar. And that would cause a lot,
Probably a small problem in the world because suddenly people would be searching for all those pennies in couch cushions and behind their dressers and then trying to bring it to the banks and demanding a revaluation. It's not worth a penny. It's now five times as much. So I'm not sure it would necessarily work very smoothly. Let me go to Rick in Sacramento. Hi, Rick. You're on.
Hi. You know, I'm in favor of getting rid of as many pennies as you can. I like to metal detect and coins in general. And, you know, the less pennies there are, the more of a value they are, they're worth. Supply and demand. I found a quarter metal detecting a few years back, and I sold that for $11,000 because there was only 60 known to exist. So you can get rid of as many pennies as you want. And you can increase their value exponentially.
exponentially almost, you know, uh, what a way to get the government to make money. They, they probably want to keep them themselves in, you know, and sell them. Well, Rick congrats on that quarter. Jay, would the value of the penny go up if we stopped producing them?
There are many items that were worthless, but then once we stopped producing them, have actually started going up in value. A quick example would be Confederate paper money. During the Civil War, the Confederacy issued its own paper money. At the end of the Confederacy, it was basically worthless, and now they're actually collector items. Many people try and present them and say, "Oh, no, no, these are actually reproductions, not the original notes."
The same thing happened during the Revolutionary War. We used to produce things called continentals, and those continentals have now become quite valuable. So yes, when things do get eliminated, if there aren't a lot floating around in the marketplace, the values tend to go up. Yeah, though as...
Frank pointed out there really are a lot at the moment. Oh, we're talking with, yeah, we're talking with Jay. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. You wanted to finish your thought. So some of this is kind of fun to talk about, but it really, I think this actually comes down to a very important political question. Who has control here? Is it Congress or the president? And up until the Trump administration, uh,
to eliminate the penny needed an act of Congress. You know, and right now the president seems to say, oh, I don't need Congress anymore. And that is actually the penny is just symptomatic of a very important political question. We're talking about the penny and all of its facets and all of its meanings. Jay just shared another one. Jay Zagorski, professor of economics at Boston University. Frank Holt, professor emeritus at the University of Houston. We'll have more with them and with you listeners. Stay with us. I'm Mina Kim.
A penny for your thoughts, listeners. Are you ready to see the penny go? I'm Ina Kim and you're listening to Forum. What would you miss about the penny if it did go? And what questions do you have about the impact of stopping penny production? If you were writing the penny's obituary, as my guest Frank Holt has, what would you include? Frank Holt is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Houston and author of When Money Talks,
Jay Zagorski is the author of the upcoming book, The Power of Cash, a professor of economics at Boston University's Questrom School of Business. You, our listeners, can join the conversation by emailing forum at kqed.org, finding us on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, a KQED forum, or calling us at 866-733-6786, 866-733-6786.
I want to bring into the conversation now Seth Chandler, head numismatist or coin collector at Wittercoin. Seth, thanks so much for being with us. Hey, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here and talk coins. Yeah. So we've actually had a couple of people asking about the values of coins going up. We've had some coin collectors, someone who does metal detecting. So what's
What's the collector's view of the penny? I've heard it called a gateway coin. What does that mean? It brings out of a lot of emotions because I started collecting coins as a young kid in the 1980s with a thing called a Whitman blue folder. It had little slots for each Lincoln cent for a day to mint mark and you would get them out of change. You'd build them out with your family. You talk about them around the dinner table.
So it's very emotional for a coin collector. And there's one key coin in there made in San Francisco in 1909, the first year, has the designer's initials on the back, Victor David Brenner. And that's a very valuable Lincoln cent. They started at about $1,000. So every single coin collector, typically when they start out, again, is a gateway coin. That's a coin they hope to achieve to own one day. So it hits all kinds of little psychological things when you talk about the penny.
Yeah. And San Francisco has sort of a special connection to the penny, right? Oh, absolutely. I mean, San Francisco in general is the king of coins. We're the only city in the country that's had three different mints. And some of the greatest American coin rarities were made right here in San Francisco, including several of the key Lincoln cents. And one, for example, one of the coins that helped me get started in the coins was
And during World War II, during the 1940s, we needed a lot of the copper to provide to make ammunition to help fight the war. So in 1943, the majority of the cents were made out of steel. And that also helped me get involved in coins. But there was a few that they accidentally made in copper in San Francisco. In fact, they made five of them. That's how many are known. And they're worth well over a million dollars. So San Francisco has produced some great American rarities when it comes to pennies.
Let me go to call her Bill and Menlo Park. Bill and Menlo Park. Hi, Bill. You're on.
Thank you. Hi. Funny, I used to have those blue coin savers, and the 1909 is one that I could never find. My comment is, well, two things, a comment and a question. Comment, $68 of coins in the house sounds kind of high. I think every household has coins that maybe have $20 or $30 in them.
Anyway, that's a comment. Question is, what is the impact? What do the experts think about the impact of Apple Pay and Google Pay and the young generation, you know, not carrying coins around and just, you know, every transaction is with an Apple Pay or a Google Pay?
Seth, as somebody who appreciates coins so much, do you want to take a stab at that? Absolutely. I mean, I hate to say it, but it's time to take the penny out back behind the barn and put it down. I mean, even us coin collectors, we don't use them. You know, I'm in my 50s now. I'm up to date on all the latest technology. I use cars. I use Apple Pay, Venmo. The last time I took coins out of my pocket, I can't remember the last time I had coins in my pocket.
They're usually in my couch and my sofa or in the jar in the corner of the living room. So, yeah. And I think the majority of coin collectors feel that way. It's time to put down the penny and just move on from it. There's billions of them out there. There will always be plenty of Lincoln cents out there. Yeah. But, Jay, what about the digital aspect of –
of money these days, you know, as Bill has pointed out. I've written a book that says, you know, the power of cash, cash and coins are still really powerful for a couple of reasons. And since we're talking to listeners in California today,
There's a need for resilience. We've seen a lot of wildfires in California. And part of the idea of fighting wildfires going forward is this idea of shutting off the power preemptively so that wildfires don't happen. When power goes off, electronic payments like Venmo, Apple Pay, Google, all these kind of things don't work because there's no electricity. When the internet goes down, electronic payments don't work.
So if we really want a resilient society, what we need to do is we need to keep both electronic payments and paper money and coins in circulation. Now, let me just finish. A lot of people say, oh, well, when the electricity comes out, we'll actually pull the money out of our coin jars. We'll pull the cash hiding behind our mattresses and things like that out. And the problem with that is if stores, if people don't know how to handle cash, then you can't use it in an emergency.
I went recently to the supermarket around the corner from my house. I gave them some money. They needed to give me 20 cents. And the cashier looked at the head cashier and said, which ones are nickels and which ones are dimes? She had no idea how to handle and give me coins. And I was thinking, well, if we have to suddenly go back for three or four days to an all-cash society, this person has no idea what to do.
Wow. And then Steve says, what would happen to all the smash penny machines at all the museums and tourist places? So that's Steve's concern as well. This listener writes, this is David on Discord. I like what the guest said about the government not needing to make a profit. Those who believe it should support a transactional view of government. The current administration acts as if everything is a transaction. Yeah.
If it doesn't make money or increase the administration's power, it has no value and should be harmed. Business operations are understandably transactional, but running the government like a business is at best naive and at worst propaganda from people who see life as a zero-sum transactional game.
A listener on Blue Sky writes, the monetary system has to have a minimum denomination and ours is the penny. Long live the American penny. John writes, I hate pennies. I never have more than four. Seth, you try to do some things to get people excited.
to love coins. What are some of the ways that you have found that gets people back into the coin cave again? Jay was pointing out how even though on this show, it seems like we have more people saying that they support the penny than not, that there are plenty of penny haters out there.
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I think the best way to get people involved in coins is just other collectors to share their coin collections with them. It's absolutely phenomenal. Some of the great coins that we've made throughout our history. I mean, even looking at the penny, we've had four different designs beginning in 1793, Lady Liberty. Then we had what's called a Flying Eagle penny, then the American Indian penny, and then up to now, the current Lincoln cent. But
I think it starts also when you're young. You know, I feel that most coin collectors started out very young. Either their grandfather handed them a few coins from his collection or a silver dollar or some pennies. You find them and change. The beautiful thing about coin collecting is there's a million different ways to approach it. But I think the key is just to get people exposed to all the different types of coins. A lot of people think the coins are strictly limited to what you can find in your pocket, but there's so much more. That's what makes it fun. It's always a treasure hunt. Yeah.
Well, this listener writes, a penny for your thoughts. Pennies are so much a part of our vernacular. What were the things that you could buy for one cent? How many things could you buy for one cent years ago? Frank, that sounds like one's right for you. Well, I remember penny candy very fondly. I grew up in a household that was entirely cash-based. I don't think my parents ever owned a credit card or a checking account. Everything was done in cash. A
Even the insurance agent would have to come around once a month and collect the premium in cash from our home. I worked at Kroger for 10 years as I was working my way through graduate school, and I learned a lot about money back then. One of the things I learned, Jay talks about losing electricity. One of the things that's changed is
Now, cashiers, I don't think, can operate a machine without electricity. They're scanners now. So it's going to be, even if you have the cash, I'm not sure that many cashiers will be able to handle it. So I think that I'm not arguing in favor of abolishing the penny or not.
But when I think with my numismatic hat, with my archaeological hat, I think about, you know, if...
If 3,000 years from now archaeologists are digging up our civilization, what are they going to find? They're going to find a lot of things like paperclips. You know, we use about as many paperclips a year as we do coins, about 11 billion of them. But what can people of the future learn about us from a paperclip?
What are they going to know about our politics, our history, our language, our culture, our economy, our values? None of that. But if they find pennies...
then they're going to find a whole host of information. And, you know, Seth, for me, that's how I got into numismatics was the history. One of the opening lines in my book was, I didn't go into history for the money. I went into money for the history. Money is so full, chock full of history. It's an historian's and archaeologist's dream. So, you know, I would say that
You know, I know the U.S. government doesn't mint pennies for the benefit of future archaeologists any more than the ancient kingdoms that I study issued coins for my benefit. But I'm awfully glad that they did. Otherwise, whole civilizations...
would be lost that are known solely from the coins that were minted and left behind by them. I studied the Bactrian Greeks who inhabited ancient Afghanistan and it's coinage that is the key to recovering their history. So yeah, coins, they may lose economic value over time, maybe in the collector's market they will rise or fall, but in a cultural sense, they will always have value.
Naresh writes, why don't we just change the metal composition of pennies so that it costs less to make? Make it using aluminum. You've touched on this, but this, is this possible? Jay, honestly, like, I feel like people have made mistakes.
even propose plastic coins to people who ran it. It never really worked. Nothing could pencil out. Right now, the government loses about $85 million, and there's a large number of machines that provide change automatically. For example, at a different supermarket near my home, I can feed in, say, $10, pay for my groceries, and it pops the coins automatically, what's supposed to be the change. And most of that is done by weight.
So if we suddenly switch to plastic coins or aluminum coins, then there's a large number of vending machines, a large number of cash machines, a large number of coin store machines that all have to be basically rebuilt to handle a totally different weight or size. Let me go to, oh, let me remind listeners you're listening to Forum first. I'm Bina Kim. Let me go to Posey in San Francisco. Hi, Posey. You're on.
Hi, thanks. I was struck by when one of the gentlemen says he doesn't remember the last time he used coins. Well, I guess he doesn't go to a laundromat. I go to the laundromat, and most of my friends do. We don't have washer-dryers in our apartment buildings or in our flats.
And most laundromats do require cash, number one. Number two, sometimes I take cabs, and I take cabs because it's cheaper than Ubers because cabs are metered. Ubers can skyrocket at peak time, and cab drivers prefer cash. My corner grocer sometimes prefers cash. Sometimes not. I use my card when not. But there are many, many, many times in the economy when there are people who prefer cash.
And so maybe you're speaking to a different economic demographic. Anyway, thank you so much. I've been listening to forums since I was a baby because I grew up with no TV. Oh, that's so great, Posey. Thanks so much for calling in. And yeah, people like cash. I like the anonymity of cash, as you were pointing out, Jay, as well.
Well, though, Liz says, I don't like pennies. I'm a quarter gal, three-fifteen quarters to do a load of laundry in SF and 25 cents for four minutes to dry in Paris. You can use a charge card to get your machine functioning. Why is America so behind?
Another listener, Kristen, writes, Another listener writes, Another listener, Michael, writes,
If the problem with the penny is one of circulation, why not provide an incentive to get the penny to circulate? Specifically, why doesn't the Treasury offer to buy back any penny for two cents? The cost of running that program would certainly be less than half a cent per penny, which would allow the Treasury not to lose any more money than it currently does without having to manufacture more pennies. Just an idea. Jay, have you heard this one?
That's the same reason why we can't pay our IRS bills directly with a credit card. Basically, things like the Treasury and the IRS cannot basically lose money. So that's why the IRS has outside organizations, which will then charge you to pass on the money to the Treasury. It's the same reason why we can't offer two cents outside.
That said, if there is suddenly, and at the very top of the hour, I suggested that there might be a rise of people demanding pennies to embarrass the president, we could be seeing individual stores or banks offering more than one cent for pennies if the supply is suddenly constricted. Let me go to caller Peter in Florida. Hi, Peter. You're on.
Hi. I'm a Beatles fan. You know, Taxman says, my advice to those who die, declare the pennies on your eyes. That's just one expression, the pennies on your eyes. There's also penny wise, pound foolish, penny for your thoughts. In other words, the penny is part of the culture. I don't want to lose it. The older I get now, I just turned 60. It's like,
the next generation doesn't know what you're talking about. It's like, don't, don't, don't, don't make, you know, let me hold on to let them know what a penny is, you know? Well, Frank, thanks for sharing that reflection. You know, we've been getting also this question a lot in terms of just the effect on charitable organizations. Jane, another listener wants to know, what will the cost be to charitable organizations to lose that spare change bucket? Or have there been some calculations around that? Sure.
I have not seen those calculations, though. I've been asked this question in the past, and I'm sorry, I just don't know. Yeah, it is something that's on people's minds. Seth, can you say definitively how coin collecting would be affected if pennies are no longer made? Or maybe not definitively what we have? I've been getting so many of these questions as well.
And so I'm just curious to get your take. You know, it's funny listening to all the people that are calling in a lot of the comments. I'm the head coin nerd here. I love coins the most. I feel like I'm the only one that wants to assassinate the penny. But this is what's interesting and what makes American coin collecting so much fun. It's progress.
And, you know, it was mentioned earlier, we got rid of the half cent. We used to have a two cent piece. We used to have a three cent piece. We used to have a half dime. We used to have a 20 cent piece and we had several different denominations of gold. So granted, yeah, again, it's so emotional, the penny. It's how we all got started. It's a part of our lives. It's as another someone who just called in, it's intertwined in the English vocabulary. Frankly, the penny is just so American.
but they're just everywhere. They're just everywhere, billions and billions of them. And it's like to the woman who called in about using cash, sure, I use cash all the time. You know, I used a little bit of cash, some dollar bills, some fives, tens, and twenties at the farmer's market this weekend. I got a few coins at home, but they just go right back into a jar. So I don't go out of the house carrying a pocket full of coins to spend throughout the day. So it's just, you know, we're all different in how we spend our money. But I think, again, you know, I think it's time to probably end the Lincoln cent.
Well, I think, Frank, that your comments have had an effect. Sky writes, I think the penny isn't necessarily an economic calculus. It's actually a cultural play. The penny is engraved with Abraham Lincoln's profile. Lincoln epitomizes a type of governance and commitment to equality that is contrary to Trump's. Catherine writes, my Depression-era mother and grandmother always had an appropriate saying for every occasion. For pennies it was, a penny saved is a penny earned. Even if you just had to stop for a few seconds, bend over, and pick one up, you had earned money.
Frank Holt, thanks so much for being with us this hour. I appreciate it. I want to remind everybody that May the 23rd is National Lucky Penny Day. Oh, I had no idea. Frank Holt's book is When Money Talks. Jay Zagorski, check out his upcoming book, The Power of Cash, a professor of economics at Boston University School of Business. Seth Chandler, head numismatist.
At WitterCoin, thank you as well. And thank you as always to our listeners for sharing their thoughts on the penny. You've been listening to Forum. Mark Nia to produce this segment. I'm Mina Kim. Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
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