Pennies are going away. Here's where to take your coin jar to cash them out in Florida
Not as many people are using coins these days, and President Donald Trump has ordered the Treasury to stop minting pennies because their production cost exceeds their value.
Pennies will still be legal tender, but cash prices will soon be rounded up or down to the nearest nickel (which cost even more to produce relative to their value than pennies). There are about 114 billion pennies in circulation, according to the Federal Reserve.
Many Americans may never notice the loss.
American consumers made only 16% of their payments in cash in 2023, according to the Federal Reserve. A 2022 Pew survey found that two-fifths of consumers never use cash at all, and experts say the pandemic kicked cashless payments into high gear.
We throw away millions of dollars in coins every year. Certain groups of Americans – lower-income households, and those over 55 – still use plenty of cash, the Fed found, along with people who prefer to shop in person. But many others let coins roll away, get lost in the dryer, or drop them unceremoniously into a coin jar, never to be thought of again.
So, what should we be doing with our piles of change?
The loose coins lying around your house and between your cushions are still money, and it adds up more than you'd think.
The typical household is sitting on $60 to $90 in lost or neglected coins, enough to fill a couple of pint-size beer mugs or a medium-sized piggy bank, according to the Federal Reserve. Coinstar, those coin-cashing machines in supermarkets and Walmarts, converts $3 billion in coins into spendable cash every year, one coin jar at a time. The average jar yields $58 in buying power.
'People underestimate the value of their jar by about half,' Coinstar CEO Kevin McColly said. 'It's a wonderfully pleasurable experience. People have this sensation of found money.'
Granted, McColly has a vested interest. His company takes a small cut of the coins that consumers deposit, generally up to 12.9% of the total and 99 cents per transaction, according to NerdWallet.
There are over 20,000 Coinstar locations around the world and you can exchange coins for cash, e-gift cards, tax-deductible charity donations and cryptocurrency. There is no fee if you opt for the e-gift cards, though.
Some regional stores also take in coins. Publix supermarkets have their own coin sorting machines that provide receipts to exchange for cash at the Customer Service counter. The fee runs about 9-10% of your total and only allows you to exchange for cash.
If you want every bit of your cash value, try your bank.
'You can go to your own bank or credit union and not pay any fee,' said Kimberly Palmer, personal finance expert at NerdWallet. However, Bankrate points out that some banks may charge a fee, and even the free ones may require you to roll the coins yourself.
McColly says not to think of your coins as clutter. Think of them as recyclables.
'They're metal,' he said. 'And they have a long and useful life.'
And if people gathered up their "idle" coins and recycled them back into the monetary system, we wouldn't have to make as many new ones. The Treasury still mints more than 5 billion coins a year, although the figure is dropping, according to the journal CoinNews.
'Those are just natural resources coming out of the Earth,' McColly said: Copper-plated zinc for pennies, copper-nickel alloys for nickels, dimes and quarters.
Canada stopped minting pennies and even asked businesses to return them to financial institutions starting in 2012. The coins in circulation are still valid.
Great Britain, Australia, Israel, Brazil, Norway, Finland and New Zealand are among nations that have either ceased to produce or have removed low-denomination coins, Reuters reported.
'We've been much slower than parts of Europe and Asia to adopt mobile payments and contactless credit cards,' said Ted Rossman, a senior industry analyst at Bankrate.
The raw material prices of copper, nickel and zinc have risen in recent years, and the Mint has had to make more coins to cover the drop in inventory during the pandemic. The familiar copper-looking coin with Abraham Lincoln's profile on it runs about 3.7 cents to produce as of fiscal year 2024, according to the U.S. Mint's annual report. To make a nickel, it'll run you about 13.8 cents.
Excited online headlines will blare "Lincoln Wheat Penny Worth $124M You Could Have at Home" at you, but don't believe the hype. The reality is most pennies are worth precisely one cent, or possibly a bit more.
"There are million-dollar pennies, but there are no $100 million pennies," said Donn Pearlman, spokesman for the Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG), a nonprofit organization composed of many of the nation's rare coin experts.
The most valuable U.S. coin ever, a $20 gold piece, a 1933 "Double Eagle" coin, sold for $18.9 million at auction in 2021.
"Only a few Lincoln cents dated 1909 to 1958 with the wheat stalks design on the back ("wheat pennies") have sold for $1 million or more," Pearlman said. After that, pennies began displaying an engraving of the Lincoln Memorial.
The most valuable pennies, which are rare but possibly still in circulation, are 1943 copper Lincoln wheat pennies, a few of which were produced accidentally as the U.S. mints were supposed to use zinc to save copper for the World War II effort, according to John Feigenbaum, publisher of rare coin price guide Greysheet.
Most Lincoln wheat pennies are worth just a few cents more than one cent. However, some may escalate into the hundreds of dollars, depending on the condition and when minted. Certain vintages, especially with minting errors, may be worth thousands. One went for more than $200,000 at an auction in 2019. You can see the NGC price guide here.
Still, all the ads shoved into your online browsing — most likely created by artificial intelligence to drive traffic to a website— have resulted in "coin shops being inundated with these folks who believe they have something rare, but they don't," according to Feigenbaum, along with people getting scammed on eBay and Etsy and counterfeit coins coming in from China.
"If I've seen these coins ... somebody is every now and again being taken advantage of," Feigenbaum said.
Even though the most valuable coins are usually in collections and have very publicly been "sold and resold," Feigenbaum said, sometimes people may inherit a cache of well-preserved coins or purchase some at an estate sale.
Read up on your coins. While there are apps you can use to check on your coins, they aren't always accurate. But you can check the value of coins in "The 2026 Red Book: A Guide Book of United States Coins," available in book stores and online on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. "It answers all kinds of questions, like, 'Oh, if I'm thinking about collecting Lincoln cents, what can I expect to pay?" said Feigenbaum, one of the book's editors. "You'll see in that book there's no million-dollar cents."
Go get your coins graded. You can have your coins authenticated at their value, just as jewelry is, from several services, including CAC, Numismatic Guaranty Company, and Professional Coin Grading Service.
Whatever you do, don't just let your coins gather dust.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: The penny is going away. Publix, Coinstar or your bank are options
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