The Indicator from Planet Money

Episode•December 8, 2025•9 min

Take a penny, leave a penny, get rid of the penny

In November, the U.S. stopped production of the humble penny after 232 years in circulation. On today’s show, a former U.S. Mint director shares the fiscal math that doomed the penny, and an artist pay tribute to this American icon. View more of Robert Wechsler’s artwork here (https://robertwechsler.com/). Related episodes: What’s the deal with the platinum coin? (https://www.npr.org/2023/01/26/1151831868/whats-the-deal-with-the-platinum-coin) For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org (http://plus.npr.org/). Fact-checking by Corey Bridges. Music by Drop Electric (https://dropelectric.bandcamp.com/). Find us: TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@planetmoney), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/planetmoney/), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/planetmoney), Newsletter (https://www.npr.org/newsletter/money). To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below: See pcm.adswizz.com (https://pcm.adswizz.com) for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices (https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices) NPR Privacy Policy (https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy)

Apple Podcasts Overcast

Transcript

0:01

Npr.

0:11

This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darian Woods.

0:14

And I'm Waylon Wong. Pennies are everywhere. They're between our couch cushions and on the floor of our cars. They're in fountains and junk drawers. And there's even a penny on Mars.

0:27

If there is like, other life out there, that's the thing, maybe that they would find about the United States.

0:34

Christina Shutt is the executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois. And if some alien were to pick up that penny on Mars, it would be holding an artifact from 1909. That's the year that the penny's design was changed to put Abraham Lincoln on it. And fun fact, he was the first American president to be put on a circulating coin.

0:56

If the one thing that you know, some other life form knows about us is Abraham Lincoln, like, that's a pretty good representation of what's the best of us, right? And so, I don't know, that's kind of cool to me.

1:10

So the penny with its image of Lincoln has made it all the way to outer space. But it has also reached a different kind of final frontier. Last month, the US Government minted the very last penny.

1:23

There are still around 300 billion pennies in circulation. That's almost nine bucks for every person in the U.S. but the coin's 232 year run is coming to an end. On today's show, we trace the pennies long decline and pay tribute to this humble bit of American currency.

1:44

This message comes from Designer Shoe Warehouse. You know that feeling when you find shoes you love at a great price and want to tell everyone about it? Find something to brag about at Designer Shoe Warehouse, like the latest styles from brands you love, the trends everyone's obsessing over, and shoes that make you feel like you head to a DSW store or dsw.com today for shoes that get you at prices that get your budget. Dsw, let us surprise you.

2:12

We wanted to talk to somebody who was there when the penny first started to become a problem. So we called up Ed Moy and when we got him on the line, he didn't waste any time.

2:22

It is really nice to meet you and get you on the phone so

2:25

I would give you a penny for your thoughts. Except that pennies are worth 4 cents, so you're getting a bonus.

2:31

You have the penny jokes coming already and I love it.

2:34

Ed served as the director of the US Mint from 2006 to 2011. The Mint is the government office in charge of making money Literally, it produces and circulates currency.

2:46

Ed's interest in coins started way before he joined the government. His immigrant parents ran a Chinese restaurant when he was growing up, and he the cash register at age 10.

2:56

When I was bored, I would paw through the change drawer and pick out coins that looked all silver or just unusual designs. And that began kind of a lifelong interest in the coin area. And this is the story about America. Little did I know that fast forward 40 years later, I would become Director of the United States Mint.

3:19

The job of the Mint is to make enough circulating coins to meet demand within the economy. And Ed says the office tries to do this at no cost to the taxpayers. And that means it shouldn't cost more to make a coin than the face value of that coin.

3:35

The best case scenario is when a coin's face value is more than the production cost. Then the government makes a profit. There's even a special term for that, seniorage. This money goes to the Treasury's general fund to help pay down the national debt.

3:49

In 2006, Ed's first year on the job, the US Mint was making money on dimes, quarters and dollar coins. But it was losing money on nickels and pennies. In fact, 2006 was the first year that the cost of making a penny went above $0.01. Ed remembers it going to 1.4 cents.

4:08

This is the run up toward the financial crisis. And the economy was still kind of hot in 2006. So base metals started, and all of a sudden this penny that was made of 97.5% zinc, 2.5% copper started creeping up above one penny to make. So I started consulting with Congress saying costs are going up.

4:37

Congress has the constitutional authority to regulate currency. And Ed remembers that lawmakers did not see the increasing cost of penny production as an urgent problem. Producing coins was still profitable overall, and losses from the pen were super small compared with the federal budget.

4:55

You know, a $80 million loss. It's a rounding error of a rounding error in the federal government.

5:02

Yeah. So the federal budget is around $7 trillion. So 80 million out of 7 trillion, that's like $0.01, one penny out of $875.

5:14

Still, Congress gave Ed the green light to study cheaper ways to make the penny. And he considered some alternatives, but they didn't pan out. So swapping in a cheaper metal like steel would still cost more than one cent per penny. And switching to non metallic materials was also impractical.

5:31

Ed left the Mint in 2011. He didn't get to finish that study on what to do with the penny. And by then, the cost of making it had gone from around 1.4 cents to 2.4 cents. Demand for pennies was also declining as people used less cash.

5:47

That was up to my successor to deliver that report to Congress and every other successor has had to.

5:55

By last month, when the Mint announced it was producing the last penny, the cost to make the coin was 3.7 cents. Ed says he understands why the government finally made the call.

6:06

It wasn't a surprise that eventually someone's going to have to make that decision. We have enough pennies. It's time to end the production of pennies.

6:18

A lot of people are totally over the penny. They throw them away or just let them sit around in jars. But we did treasures this little guy.

6:28

My name is Robert Wexler, and I'm an artist. And for more than two decades now, I've been focusing on the US penny. And I just finished 100,000 Penny Cube.

6:39

Robert cut notches into 100,000 pennies. Then he slid them together to form a 3D lattice. The sculpture took him seven years to finish, and it's on display at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

6:52

I was worried that the penny would be canceled and removed from currency before I finished, because if I finished the piece after that, it would be nothing but a memorial to the penny. And I didn't like that idea because for me, it has a lot more to say.

7:08

This coin has fascinated Robert ever since he was a kid and his grandfather would pretend to pull a penny out of his ear. He kept those coins in an orange Tupperware container because they felt magical to him.

7:19

For his art, Robert needs a lot more than Tupperware containers of pennies. So he orders them in bulk from his bank.

7:27

They really don't like doing it because they're heavy and they take up space in the vault, and they insist that you pick them up immediately, but they can't tell you when they're going to arrive because they don't want you to know when their bank truck is going to be there. Because for security reasons.

7:41

Oh, my gosh. Because what if you pulled off a heist?

7:43

Exactly.

7:44

You just have to be on call exactly when the pennies arrive.

7:47

Right. The hassle is worth it. For Robert, though, he still finds wonder in the penny.

7:52

There are these, like, lowly gutter things. You know, they live in muck, and they're exposed to unspeakable filth. But that has this incredible effect in that they do turn blue and green, but they also turn, like, these spectacular oranges and reds or these, like, really lovely waxy blacks. And it's so unique and special and just. It's like a little world.

8:19

So what's to become of all the pennies still circulating in the world? Well, Robert will take them to use in his art. Former US Mint director Ed Moy saves them in a coin jar until he has enough to deposit at the bank.

8:31

And back at the Lincoln Museum in Illinois, volunteers set out pennies for school children to find on the ground. Executive director Christina Shutt says they've given away more than 200,000 pennies in the last couple of decades.

8:44

So it's really cute seeing kids like 3 and 4 year olds running around the plaza looking for the penny to find it. And it gives the volunteers great delight and joy because then they get an opportunity to talk about how Lincoln really is everywhere.

8:57

He's coming out of your ear.

8:59

That will explain the waxy patina that Robert's finding.

9:01

The black wax.

9:03

Yes.

9:03

Unspeakable filth. Darian. You know what, though? The gift shop at the Lincoln Museum no longer accepts pennies.

9:10

How about nickels? I hear these lose even more money now than the penny did.

9:14

Yeah, last year it cost the mint close to 14 cents to produce a nickel. That's more than double its face value. So I don't know, maybe we'll do a nickel obit next year.

9:22

Dropping like flyers.

9:26

This episode was produced by Julia Ritchie with engineering by Sophie McArthur. It was fact checked by Corey Bridges. Kate Kincannon is the show's editor, and the indicator is a production of N.

Take a penny, leave a penny, get rid of the penny

0:00

0:00