The US Penny Costs Nearly 4 Cents to Make. But for One Sector of Souvenir Sellers, It's a Living – VINNews

Trump ordered the Treasury Department to stop creating penny on his social media accounts with a February 10th sentence. This points out that throwing a copper-coated zinc disc in your pocket costs the government more than a cent.

Will Trump's orders destroy Penny? There are no indications that US mint will stop pushing the Denver and Philadelphia pennies. Mint officials did not respond to requests for clarification this week.

But the President's Penny pledge is already felt in one niche world. It's a lesser-known world that relies on buying wholesale penny, loading it into machines, and persuading parents to supply a few dollars to the machinery stamping penny designs.

Small trajectories of collectors and craftsmen develop around them. And without Penny, the whole thing is facing an uncertain future.

The last penny?
In 1982 a new copper penny disappeared from the circulation. 73 years after the first Lincoln penny was built. They were replaced by primarily zinc coins, thinly coated with copper.

The old ones of solid copper are more flexible and easier to stamp, making them a hot item for kids.

“They clean up, so when they stretch out the printed coin dinosaurs and sharks, they maintain ghost images of Lincoln's printed heads,” said Brian Peters, general manager of Minnesota-based Penny Press Machine Co.

Jeweler Angelo Rosato worked in scenes of new Milford, Connecticut, his hometown, historical and sentimental scenes with hand-printed pennies from the 1960s and '70s. Everything was catalogued obsessively, including over 4,000 pennies of photographs.

“We're a huge Penny fan. Aaron Thebro from Roseland, New Jersey, said he was with his two sons at the American Dream Mall.

“I like Penny,” said his nine-year-old son Mason.

Some people don't want the US to stop making cents
Critics say the rise and billions of pennies in the cycle of e-commerce will allow the US to stop printing copper coins tomorrow and see almost widespread effects for decades. But some people are looking at it for fear that Trump's public criticism of Penny will affect their business.

Alan Fleming in Scotland is the owner of Penny Press Factory, one of the figures around the world, making machines that flatten coins and stamp them.

“A lovely retired gentleman in Boston was selling over 100,000 cents a few years ago, and he's no longer there,” Fleming wrote. “We will need to purchase new uncirculated cents within the next 12 months to supply and operate the machine!”

No matter what happens to a niche business like Fleming, Penny's defenders say it's an important tool to lubricate the economy, even if it's a proposal they lose money.

Since the invention of money, humanity has been troubled by the problems of small change, and how do we deny the amount of small enough that the metal coin itself is actually more valuable.

In 2003, Thomas J. Sargent and another economist wrote “The Big Issue of Small Change,” calling it the “first reliable, analytically sound explanation” of why the government struggled to maintain a stable supply of small changes due to high production costs.

Why pay for coins?
In a digital world where lines are blurred between reality and virtual coins, you can feel at ease.

“What this is all about the United States as a country is that it's an incredibly conservative country when it comes to money,” said Ute Wartenberg, executive director of the American Monetary Association.

Penny, Nickel, Dime, Quarter may be designed by artists who use special software to laser-scalp small portraits of leaders and landmarks.

“When I tell people what I'm going to do, it's pretty cool just to say my initials are on Penny,” said Joseph Menna, the 14th sculptor of the United States Mint, in the 2019 film, Heads Up: Stop Making Cents?”

Fleming hopes that some lobbying can help. “We'll probably need to travel to Washington and talk to President Trump and Elon Musk to see if we can cut our deals on buying millions of pennies from them.”