It costs more than a penny to make a penny.

Manufacturing pennies

The humble penny might not seem like much, but producing one actually costs more than it’s worth. According to the U.S. Mint, making a single penny cost 3.69 cents in 2024 — about 3 cents for production and the rest for administrative costs and distribution. This wasn’t always the case: Though tracking costs back to the penny’s debut in 1793 is difficult, we do know it cost less than a cent to make a penny in 2005, when production amounted to 0.97 cents per coin. The next year, the cost went up to 1.23 cents, and has remained above face value ever since.

The penny has changed over time to cut costs. In 1857, rising copper prices led to a reduction in its size, and in 1982, the coin became mostly zinc with a thin copper coating. But rising material costs aren’t the only reason pennies are so expensive to make. Most pennies distributed by the U.S. Mint are given out as change in cash transactions but then never reused, creating an endless demand for replacements. This cycle, one The New York Times called a “perpetual penny paradox,” results in two-thirds of the billions of pennies minted each year — 3.2 billion were minted in 2024 alone — vanishing from circulation after reaching consumers.

The penny isn’t the only coin that costs more to produce than its face value: In 2024, making a nickel cost 13.78 cents, but far fewer of them are made than pennies. Debates about whether the U.S. should follow countries such as New Zealand, which eliminated its 1-cent coin in 1990, and Canada, which stopped making pennies in 2012, have been ongoing for decades. People against the change argue that the low-denomination coin still supports lower-income families and charities, while those who want the penny gone see it as a financial and environmental burden on the country. As of 2024, there were estimated to be 240 billion 1-cent coins in existence in the U.S. — or around 700 pennies per person.

By the Numbers

Did you know?

In colonial America, coins were cut into pieces to make change.

Colonial America had a complicated economic system. Currencies including British pounds, Portuguese moidores, and German thalers were in circulation, as was the Spanish dollar, which was one of the most commonly used. Since smaller denominations were often needed but not otherwise available, people would physically cut the dollar into halves, quarters, or eighths to make change. It gave rise to the Spanish dollar being known as a “piece of eight,” and the pieces were known as “bits.” Since a quarter of a dollar equaled two of these bits, the term "two bits" became a common nickname, and it’s still sometimes heard today to describe 25 cents.