US to stop producing pennies. What to do with your neglected coins, and how to tell if they're valuable

USA Today

27-05-2025

US to stop producing pennies. What to do with your neglected coins, and how to tell if they're valuable
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Donald Trump tells Treasury Department to stop making pennies
President Donald Trump told the Treasury Department to stop making pennies, citing production costs.
Americans are holding an estimated $60-$90 in coins per household.
While some rare pennies are valuable, most are worth only a few cents.
Consumers can exchange coins for cash at banks, credit unions, or Coinstar kiosks.
Learn to love your coins.
That's the message from Kevin McColly, CEO of Coinstar, the company behind those coin-cashing machines you see in supermarkets.
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.
President Donald Trump has ordered the Treasury to stop minting pennies because their production cost exceeds their value. (Intriguingly, the same is true of nickels.)
Many Americans regard both nickels and pennies as more nuisance than currency. The typical household is sitting on $60 to $90 in neglected coins, enough to fill one or two pint-size beer mugs, according to the Federal Reserve. Americans throw away millions of dollars in coins every year, literally treating them like trash.
Why do we treat coins like trash? McColly thinks we should change the way we think about coins.
To state the obvious, coins are worth money. Coinstar converts $3 billion in coins into spendable cash every year, one coin jar at a time. The average jar yields $58 in buying power.
Most of us don't realize how much our coins are worth. Thus, a trip to a coin-exchange kiosk (or a bank, or credit union) can yield a pleasant surprise.
'People underestimate the value of their jar by about half,' McColly said. 'It's a wonderfully pleasurable experience. People have this sensation of found money.'
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.
What's next for the penny? The details on US decision to end penny production
Coins aren't clutter, they're currency
As for the rest of us, McColly thinks it is time for a paradigm shift. Don't think of your coins as clutter. Think of them as recyclables.
'They're metal,' he said, in case we needed a reminder. 'And they have a long and useful life.'
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.
His point: If Americans got serious about gathering up their idle coins and 'recycling' them into the monetary system, the Mint wouldn't have to make so many new ones.
Granted, McColly has a vested interest. His company collects a small cut of the coins that consumers deposit.
'You can go to your own bank or credit union and not pay any fee,' said Kimberly Palmer, personal finance expert at NerdWallet. Both NerdWallet and Bankrate offer tip sheets on exchanging coins for cash. Most banks will take an account holder's coins for free, Bankrate reports, but not all, and you may need to roll the coins yourself.
'I think that a lot of people probably do have hidden coins stashed around their home, and it can be worth their time to go and collect them,' Palmer said.
McColly notes that Coinstar generally waives its fee if the depositor chooses to trade in coins for a retail gift card, rather than cash.
He is not alone in forecasting a future for the penny, the nickel, and their more profitable kin.
'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 pandemic delivered a timely reminder of how much we still rely on cash: Consumers and business owners sat on their coins amid a global shutdown, seeding an actual coin shortage.
'It kind of froze the whole system,' Rossman said.
Retiring coins: Where does it end?
While Trump has only instructed the Mint to stop making pennies, some voices have urged America to stop using them.
The Common Cents Act, introduced on April 30 by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, would round cash transactions to the nearest five cents.
'The penny is outdated and inefficient and no longer serves the needs of our economy,' said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the New York Democrat.
But the bill could push the nation down a slippery slope.
'So, You Want to Get Rid of the Penny,' the New York Times mused in a recent headline. 'Do You Have a Plan for the Nickel?'
As it turns out, nixing the penny creates new problems. If America rids itself of pennies, the Times reported, the nation will soon find itself flooded with nickels.
The government loses nearly three cents on every penny it mints. On a nickel, it loses nearly nine cents. More nickels would mean steeper losses.
America could kill both the penny and the nickel, the two money-losers on its roster of coins.
But without pennies or nickels, how would a consumer pay a 15-cent tab?
You could round every price to the nearest 10 cents, taking the Common Cents Act a step further. But then, what becomes of the quarter?
And so on.
Do you own an old penny worth as much as a million dollars?
Experts say it's highly unlikely.
You may have seen one of many headlines blasted online lately about valuable pennies in circulation, "Lincoln Wheat Penny Worth $124M You Could Have at Home" reads one, but the reality is most pennies are worth one cent or possibly a bit more.
Reality does not meet the hype, according to one expert.
"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. "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."
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. 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, said John Feigenbaum, publisher of rare coin price guide Greysheet.
In rare cases, some 1943 pennies have sold for $1 million, while one went for more than $200,000 at an auction in 2019.
Depending on their condition, those 1943 Lincoln wheat pennies would be worth at most between $100,000 and $250,000, Feigenbaum told USA TODAY.
But the likelihood of having a near-priceless penny is similar to "saying your lottery ticket might be worth $100,000. Of course, anything is possible, right? But not likely," said Feigenbaum, who is also the PNG's executive director.
What are wheat pennies worth?
So-called "wheat pennies" get their name from the back of the coin having stalks of wheat encircling the "One Cent" text. They were produced from 1909 to 1958. After that, the wheat stalks were shorn and pennies began displaying an engraving of the Lincoln Memorial.
Most Lincoln wheat pennies are not super-valuable and 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. You can see the NGC price guide here.
But headlines about super-valuable "Lincoln wheat pennies" stretch the imagination. Most likely, the headlines are created by artificial intelligence to drive traffic to a website, Feigenbaum said.
"These coins are improbably in people's change," he said.
Still, all the online-stirred interest has resulted in "coin shops being inundated with these folks who believe they have something rare, but they don't," according to Feigenbaum.
Increased interest in coins has led to overvalued coins being sold on eBay and Etsy, plus there are counterfeit Lincoln wheat pennies made in China being hawked.
"If I've seen these coins ... somebody is every now and again being taken advantage of," Feigenbaum said.
What should I do if I have some pennies or other coins I think are valuable?
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.
Mike Snider is a reporter on USA TODAY's Trending team. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, X and email him at mikegsnider & @mikegsnider.bsky.social & @mikesnider & [e-mail]