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Did you know that the U.S. penny may soon be a thing of the past? Well, sort of.
The United States Mint is set to stop producing pennies in early 2026. They’ve already set a timeline, and at this point, the mint is simply using up the penny blanks that they have already ordered. Production is set to end in early 2026.
That doesn’t mean that pennies will disappear altogether, though. So, what’s next now that the penny is discontinued? We explored what might happen if the penny was discontinued in a previous post – and now, some of that is becoming a reality.
The U.S. mint and the central bank have no plans to remove pennies from circulation. Quite simply, they are stopping the production of new pennies.
Over time, the supply of pennies in circulation will likely dwindle. In the past few years, the U.S. Mint has produced billions of pennies each year. As that winds down and eventually stops completely in 2026, there will be no new pennies entering circulation.
It’s also possible that coin collectors will keep pulling more and more pennies out of circulation – both for rare dates, and for bulk pennies in general.
The U.S. Penny will always retain its value of $0.01. The US government has no current plans to implement a rounding scheme, like Canada did, although this may happen in the future. In Canada, most cash transactions are rounded to the nearest $0.05 (so a purchase of $3.96 would be rounded down to $3.95). Currently, there are no plans to do so in the U.S.
This also means that it will remain illegal to melt down pennies. Did you know that melting or refining US currency and coins is illegal?
Some collectors hoard pennies because their copper value is actually substantially higher than $0.01 per penny. However, the U.S. mint penny discontinuation won’t affect the legally protected status of pennies, so it will remain illegal to melt pennies down.
A primary reason behind the penny discontinued move is simply fiscal savings. It costs around 3.7 cents to produce each penny, and the U.S. Mint is paid the cash value ($0.01) by the treasury.
While the U.S. Mint is a federally controlled organization, it functions almost like a business and is financially independent. The mint produces coins and sells them to the U.S. Treasury, which distributes them to the banking system. Any “profit” the U.S. mint produces is used to pay down the federal deficit. So in this case, ending penny production will increase the U.S. Mint’s profitability and save taxpayers money.
Pennies being discontinued will almost certainly affect the coin collecting market, but the true effect remains to be seen. For years it’s been common to see bulk lots of pennies for sale on secondary markets online, and this is likely to continue to ramp up as collectors essentially hoard pennies!
Prices for key date collectible pennies are unlikely to be drastically impacted. After all, production of modern coins has little effect on older key dates. With that said, the penny being all over the news and in popular discussion could in theory drive more interest from collectors. Time will tell!
