ECONOMY STUDIOOn November 12, 2025, the Mint in Philadelphia struck its last circulating pennies, ending 232 years of production1. The reason was arithmetic. In fiscal 2024, one penny cost 3.69 cents to produce, administer and distribute, and it was worth one cent2.
It was not a one-year problem. For 19 consecutive years, the unit cost of producing pennies and nickels exceeded their face values3.
What a penny cost
The cost of making a penny was 0.97 cents in 2005 and 3.69 cents in 20244.
In fiscal 2024 the Mint shipped 3.172 billion pennies and lost $85.3 million on them5. The nickel was worse per coin: it cost 13.78 cents to make, against 5.76 cents for a dime and 14.68 cents for a quarter6.
Using cheaper metal would not have fixed it. Pennies have been 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper since 19827. A decade before the end, a penny cost 1.42 cents, and Treasury said stopping would save about $56 million a year8. The Mint’s own budget for fiscal 2026 puts the saving at $66 million9.
How it ended
In May 2025, the Treasury ordered its final shipment of penny blanks, and the Mint kept striking until they ran out10. Production was about 3.23 billion pennies in 2024 and 1.30 billion in 2025, the final year11. The last coin America dropped before the penny was the half-cent, in 185712.
The pennies already out there are not going away. Treasury estimates about 114 billion are in circulation, calls them severely underutilized, and says they remain legal tender13.
The $100 bill costs 11 cents
If a coin can cost more than itself, what about paper? The Federal Reserve says printing one $100 note costs 11.3 cents in paper, ink, labor and direct overhead, and a $1 note costs 4.1 cents14.
So the value of a $100 bill is not in the paper. It is not in a vault either. Currency in circulation is about $2.42 trillion, while the broad money supply, M2, was $23.34 trillion in August 202615,16. Cash is roughly one dollar in ten; the rest is numbers in accounts16.
What stands behind a dollar
Until 1971, a dollar was a claim on gold. On August 15, 1971, President Nixon closed the gold window, and foreign governments could no longer exchange dollars for gold17. Since then prices have risen so far that what cost $100 in August 1971 costs about $826 in September 202618.
What keeps the dollar working is that everyone takes it, and the law backs the habit. United States coins and currency are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes and dues (31 U.S.C. 5103)19.
Making more of it
There is a cost to money that is cheap to make. The money supply, M2, was $4.67 trillion in January 2000 and $23.34 trillion in August 2026, five times as much15. Over the same period, what cost $100 in January 2000 costs about $200 today20.
The extreme case is history, not a forecast for the dollar. Zimbabwe’s 100-trillion-dollar note was legal tender for six months in 2009, at the end of its hyperinflation21.
What changes for you
The Common Cents Act, which orders the Treasury to stop making pennies and lets stores round cash payments to the nearest five cents when exact change is unavailable, passed the Senate by unanimous consent on September 28, 2026, and awaits the President’s signature22. Card payments stay exact22. Retailers short of pennies are already rounding: Target and Whole Foods round cash change in the customer’s favor, and Kwik Trip rounds every cash sale down to the nearest nickel23.
Nothing you own lost value. The pennies in a jar are still legal tender13. What stopped is a coin that cost more than it was worth, and that is the clearest picture of where money’s value lives: in the trust behind it, not the metal or the paper.
