There are an estimated 114 billion pennies currently in circulation, but they are “severely underutilized” according to the Treasury department. Many are at home in coin jars or junk drawers, or some other forgotten location gathering dust.

The math says that all those pennies could fill a cube roughly 13 stories high. Many people don’t even take them as change, tossing them into the leave-a-penny-take-a-penny dishes at store checkouts.

Lenard said the large number of pennies in circulation means that retailers won’t necessary run out of them for a while. But eventually stores won’t be able to get new rolls of pennies from their banks and will start rounding transactions up or down to the nearest nickel. The decision when to do that will rest with each retailer, not official government policy.

Electronic transactions such as credit and debit card purchases, will continue to be down to the penny, Lenard said, with only cash transactions being rounded.

Even in countries like Canada, where penny production has been discontinued, the penny remains legal tender today. Canada’s finance ministry said pennies retain their value for transactions “indefinitely” despite the fact that it stopped making the coin in 2012. If a customer wants to use pennies to complete a transaction, most retailers are likely to allow them, Lenard said.

“There’s a saying in retail, ‘Never lose a customer over a penny,’” he said. “I never really thought of it in these terms, but it applies even more here. I think if someone wants to pay with pennies, most retailers will err on the side of making those customers happy.”

https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/25/business/penny-what-happens-to-them

by coinfanking

13 comments

  1. I bet they still work. I have an old saab too so not overly worried.

  2. Most will be melted by the government eventually because of its intrinsic value. Commercial enterprises would love to do that themselves. but it is illegal to do so. There is no question it will remain a legal tender.

  3. The main thing I am wondering about is when the official guidance comes out for rounding with taxes. My wife was billed for underpaying by one penny to the state for gross receipts.

  7. Melted and sold to industry, some. Melted and used for other coinages, probably. Pennies are mostly zinc, coated with copper. All other coins use copper so the copper in pennies would just be recycled.

  8. Question is. How tall of a trump statue would 114 billion pennies make?

  9. Everything gets rounded to the nearest 5 cents. They will slowly leave circulation. Source: every modernised country not named USA

  10. Mar-a-Lago will be suddenly be named the copper penny reserve

  11. Better make sure and keep the rare ones. Penny values in the next 10-20 years will skyrocket. Love it.

  12. These pennies are very much needed metals.
    They will be used for energy transition.

  13. Lots are gonna be melted down – some by the government and some by private citizens. Some will end up with numismatics enthusiast, same as most of the other discontinued coins throughout history.

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