I’m not sure if you’ve heard from one of your many friends who work at the US Mint, but the last penny ever has been minted. That’s right – after a run of over 238 years, they’ve been making pennies since 1793, remember – the penny’s time is finally over, falling victim to increasing irrelevance, a fate that feels looming for so many of us.
There’s also the fact that pennies cost about 4 cents to make, so that’s not really a good return. That can’t be the only reason, though, as a nickel costs 14 cents to make! What the hell? A dime is a steal, with a production cost of only 6 cents, and even the quarter isn’t bad, at 15 cents. Hell, that’s only a penny more than a nickel! Think how much more money we could make if we made quarters instead of nickels! We’ll be rich! I should be King of the Treasury!
The Mint seems to have been hinting at the penny’s demise on their site via that little asterisk by the penny in their Full Family Line of American coins:
This is all fascinating and a big deal, numismatically, but we’re a car website, dammit. How does this affect cars? I mean, you haven’t been able to buy a car for a penny since, what, 1798, and back then a penny would get you a Murdoch Steam Carriage, two hogsheads of mead, and two quarter-hapennies in change, or something. But since then, what do pennies have to do with cars? Well, a few things, actually, which I will list now, so we can all appreciate the car-penny connections.
Penny Fuses
Okay, don’t do this, it’s incredibly stupid and dangerous, but this definitely is something people have been using pennies for with cars for years. The thinking is if you blow a fuse, you can jam a penny in there and the electrical whatever will work again, at least until whatever caused the fuse to pop in the first place happens again, only now instead of popping a fuse, your car catches on fire and you start to wonder why you thought it was so damn important to listen to your dumb podcasts while you drove.
Paying Traffic Tickets And Fines In Pennies
This is kind of a dickhead move, but it’s something that’s been happening for decades. Pissed-off people will choose to get “revenge” on “the system” by paying fines in massive wads of pennies, though usually all that gets accomplished is a really terrible work day for some poor clerk.
Patch Holes In Gas Tanks (at least in my Beetle)
I’m not exactly sure how common this is, really, but my own 1973 Volkswagen Beetle had this very thing: a penny used to patch a hole in the gas tank. The gas tank on a Beetle forms the floor of the trunk, so I can imagine how it happened; someone was loading something heavy and sharp, maybe a Moravian star made out of solid cast iron, dropped it, and punctured the tank. That’s possible?
Anyway, a penny is a good, cheap way to patch a little hole. I suspect this has been used in metal repairs countless times, in all sorts of cars. I can only prove it in one case, but still.
Tire Tread Test
This may be one of the more famous and useful intersections of car and penny. Here’s how it works: you take a penny, turn it upside down so Abraham Lincoln’s head is inverted from how most historians suspect it was usually oriented (scalp up, neck down), and stick it in between your tire’s treads.
If you can still see the top of Lincoln’s head, your tread depth is too low (2/32″ or less) and you should save that penny to get yourself some new tires.
Cars Covered in Pennies
This is another one of those things you see periodically – people covering their cars in pennies to give it a unique, and comparatively cheap-to-execute look.
In this example, the gentleman covered his 2000 Chevy Blazer in 51,000 pennies, for a total value of $510 and a weight penalty of about 281 pounds if most of the pennies were minted post-1982, which is when they went to zinc covered in a delicious copper shell, and weighed 2.5 grams, as opposed to pre-’82 pennies, which were all copper alloy and weighed 3.11 grams. Let’s assume a mix and say these all add, oh, 450 pounds or so.
Still, much cheaper than painting the car with paint, and I bet there’s a little bit of dent/scratch protection as well.
Penny Racers
Okay, finally, who remembers Penny Racers? I sure do – I wrote about them here a good while ago, and as far as I know, they’re the only toy car ever to feature a penny as a crucial component of the toy. Here’s the one I have, a little Baja Beetle version. I must have had this thing since I was, like, ten? Eleven?
The penny would slot in the back there, and let the little car do wheelies, which is, of course, cool.
There’s still billions of pennies out there in circulation, so I suspect this is hardly the last time you’ll encounter them. In fact, I’m just about positive every American reading this now can look in drawers or their dryer lint trap and pull out at least a nice handful of pennies. I bet your car has a pretty good amount of pennies already in it, too.
Things will be a little weird for a bit, but it likely won’t take that long to get past not using pennies, if we’re honest. But anything that has been part of daily life for nearly 240 years I think deserves some sort of send-off.
Am I missing any other good car-penny connections? If so, tell us in the comments! In detail! Painful detail!
I’m glad the penny is gone. I tried to use one to wedge in between the handle and frame of the wing window on my old Dodge truck to stop it from whistling at highway speeds but it wasn’t quite thick enough for the job. A nickel worked better. And was easier to find every time I opened the window and it dropped to the floor.
Long live the nickel!
The South African 50 cent piece has been used as a welsh plug on some of the older tractors. Just hammers right in.It is much cheaper than the original.
If you’re stranded and only have British coins, you can still check your tyre tread depth. The raised edge of a 20p is 1.6mm and your tread should be deep enough to cover it.
(picture)
If you own a British car equipped with the “waxstat” version of an SU HS carburettor it’s likely that a previous owner has replaced the wax capsule with a pair of pennies.
Not just for pennies, but weld a screwdriver bit to a coin, and you’ve got a handy little carburetor adjustment tool.
I recently used pennies to block off the bolt holes when plasti dipping some wheels. (they just so happened to fit perfectly in the tapered holes)
A flat washer costs 5 cents. A penny costs, well, a penny, and I already own a drill and bits.
And if you will expand your question to all things vehicular, those big wheel bicycles were sometimes called “Penny Farthings” but I don’t think they cost a penny.
Be seeing you!
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Wait, so somebody WELDED a penny to your gas tank? Must be a lucky penny.
more likely brazed a penny to the gas tank
I was actually thinking it was a wartime steel penny, but those didn’t have the Lincoln Memorial on the back.
Looks like JB Weld or similar to me.
That guy looks exactly like my mental picture of someone who covers their car in 51,000 pennies. The hat just brings it all together.
Huh, so the US penny is dead! We killed them several years back in Canada, and I think the majority of pennies I see floating around here these days are American.
The only interesting things I can think of that I’ve done with pennies were using a stack of them as a conductive spacer for a 3D printed flashlight I made, and cutting one in half with an angle grinder to pay to a friend as part of some joke
Not officially. The Trump administration just decided to stop minting them with no act from Congress or an official policy of how retailers need to round prices.
It is illegal for any store that takes federal SNAP benefits to round down.
Can they round up?
Yes – but that is against state law in some states.
It seems simple, but it’s really a problem isn’t it? Sure stores and everyone can adjust prices up or down to account for this, no more $3.99, it’s $4.00 or $3.95, however, what about taxes? My sales tax is 5.6%, that’s rarely going to resolve as an unpennied total. In fact it can resolves to 4 decimal places. So some rounding has to happen. If I buy a product a $3.95 my total isn’t $4 and 17.12 cents, it’s either $4.17 or $4.18
Yes. Like many things it seems simple in concept but become very complicated when executed.
You’re overreacting a bit.
The penny is still legal tender, and there are about 114 billion U.S. pennies in circulation, so still many years before they become irrelevant, like its half-penny predecessor.
The Secretary of the Treasury has the authority to suspend penny production, and exercised that authority. It’s also not a surprise, as such a thing has been discussed for decades.
https://www.usmint.gov/news/media-kit/penny
That is the problem. The federal government stopped minting pennies without doing anything to facilitate an orderly change. It is legal tender and plenty of places have laws that say retailers must give customers exact change.
You seem to misunderstand how pennies circulate (or don’t) in the economy. They go from the Mint – to retailers – to customers and then a large portion of them never get used again. The mint stopped making pennies for circulation back in May and some areas are already running out of them.
It absolutely makes sense to get rid of the penny – should have happened decades ago but it should be done with a clear policy and a plan.
I agree there should have been some more guidance or something regarding this event, but I also appreciate the government not trying to dictate what individuals and retailers have to do.
It also sounds like it’s up to the retailers to decide how to adjust to the new reality. I’ve seen some round up, I’ve seen others round down, and others that chalk the difference up to be made up for in other ways and let the customer decide to over or short pay.
As for shortages, the mint made about 3.2 billion pennies in FY2024. Maybe we need a campaign to encourage folks to spend their pennies (or turn them into financial institutions in exchange for larger denominations) to get more back in circulation?
When you get one gallon of gasoline that’s listed as – for example – $2.999 a gallon (since they factor those hundredths of a cent in the price), do you expect to have to pay $3.000, or $2.990?
The problem with leaving it to the retailers is that there are other federal and state laws controlling what they can do. As I mentioned above – it is illegal under federal law for any retailer taking SNAP payments to round down. In some states it is illegal for any retailer to round up. What is a grocery store to do in a state that doesn’t allow them to round up when they can’t get pennies from the bank?
Gasoline sales are specifically regulated at the state level with rules on rounding. It is also one of the few retail sales where retailers are required to advertise the price with tax included. (Which should be the case for all sales)
The correct way to discontinue a coin or bill is for Congress to:
The US Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate US currency. If we want to get rid of the penny then Congress must do their job.
As I mentioned above – it is illegal under federal law for any retailer taking SNAP payments to round down.
But SNAP is electronic right? Or are you saying that the store as a whole, once accepting SNAP can’t round any transaction.
Yes SNAP is electronic with no rounding.
Federal law does not allow retailers to charge a SNAP customer more than any other customer. That means a grocery story can’t sell an item priced at $9.97 to a SNAP customer and charge $9.95 to a cash customer. At the same time in some states they cannot charge a cash customer $10.00 because it is illegal to round up.
They are stuck with a situation where they cannot meet both federal and state law without pennies to give cash customers exact change. They could just stop taking cash – except in some states they are also required to allow cash transactions.
I just read about this, where a health care provider refused cash, and older guy (like 80s) was “ummm that’s BS!” now they accept his cash. I forget what state is was, but they indeed has “you must take cash” law on the books.
So on rounding though, how does that work with taxes? The store collects a ton of tax, but even still there has to be some kind of rounding?
Today both cash and electronic retail payments round to the nearest penny as allowed by law.
When other countries dropped their 1 cent coins they set standard rules.
1–2 cents → round down to 0
3–4 cents → round up to 5
6–7 cents → round down to 5
8–9 cents → round up to 10
Exactly. I assume there are laws that govern what to do when, say, an interest payment works out to $151.2674 due to percentages, and what to do with that $.0074. Likewise there are certainly laws that govern the same thing with sales taxes.
So there are laws or rules governing how to handle amounts less than $.01; what is now missing is a law to govern amounts lower than $.05.
Just send all the fractions of a cent to Gus Gorman.
The current administration is penny foolish and pound foolish.
It’s not dead, just not being minted. There are more than enough in circulation to keep it relevant for many years to come.
And yet I keep seeing signs in stores claiming there’s a shortage. Are we suddenly hoarding them intentionally instead of incidentally? There can’t possibly be a shortage already.
It seems to vary. It usually tends to relate to which banks the stores source their physical money from, and what they are willing and able to stock. For a few weeks last year my job was short on 10 dollar bills, and a while after we were short on 5s. Now everything seems normal. Strange ebb and flow to supply and demand, I suppose.
Of course the store could just be claiming to be short because they don’t want to deal with them. If I were to create prices for things at a retail store I’d find a way to price them so that they rounded to the nearest nickel or so, if not the nearest quarter, just to simplify the change process for those that still use cash.
The US Mint stopped making pennies for circulation in May.
The recent ones have only been for proof sets and such.
Pennies don’t make much cents these days. Hate to admit it, but I have used them as fuses, along with screws.
You didn’t use it as a fuse. You used it as a wire.
Yeah, I guess the wire became the fuse. It was a long time ago. I know a lot more now than I did then.
Technically it could be a fuse if your wiring and electrical load was stout enough.
Truth. If your bass-thumper amplifier pulls enough power to require 4/0, a penny would be a very cost effective fuse. We can also hear you coming from the next county.
Or see the smoke rising from the car fire.
I used pennies as a backer to weld the 3,000 dent puller holes the Earl Scheib artists left the sheet metal of my Fairlane. You gotta use pre-1982 copper pennies if you want them to come off, though. I have about 20 cents welded to the inside of my quarter panels to prove that point!
Did you weld a couple dimes to the fender on the other side of the car to balance out the weight?
If there are 20 pennies welded to it, isn’t it now a $0.45 panel?
Set you up real good for that one! 9/10 on the dad joke rimshot scale.
For one winter, when my driver door window mechanism failed I used pennies wedged between the window and the door frame to keep the window from dropping down into the door. Also, when the knobs cracked off the radio volume and tuning controls, I pushed pennies into the slots at the end of the stems to provide some leverage when using those controls.
Any car in Bulgaria that has been repaired between 1995 and 1997 has drilled coins for shims all over, as hyperinflation had made coins many orders of magnitude less expensive than buying shims.
For scale – it was 100 pennies to one Lev, with denominations of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 pennies as well as 1 Lev and 2 Lev coins (those were nice, heavy coins, similar to the dollar coins).
The ones and twos were quite small about half-inch diameter, as well as the 10 (about the sice of a 1 cent, or smaller), the 20 were larger but quite thin, the 50 were ok, and the 1 and 2 Lev were solid shims.
At the height of the inflation, the Lev had dropped to about 6000 for one dollar, which made for a bag of 6000 shims for one dollar, if you wanted big ones (the one Lev coin was 0.25oz and about an inch in diameter, which would make for an 80lb bag of shims), and up to 60000 for a buck if you needed really small ones. That would still have been a bag of 120-ish lb.
Of course, the energy spent to drill them cost money too. But still.
As a bystander that loves history and doesn’t really know that much about south eastern Europe, Bulgaria has been one of my biggest surprises and interests. Unfortunately since the Ukraine thing started you hear nothing out of the country anymore. Some of the best deep dives into both NATO and Russian equipment were done there but, stuff happens, and here we are.
Car related, he didn’t mention if pennies were used. Dad told of being in a friends car, they got a flat, lug wrench was too large, a coin in the socket sidewall got it.
This is the great, file-it-away-mentally kinda thing I come here for!
More importantly, will gas stations stop doing the 9/10th of a cent now and switch to 4/5 of a nickel?
I’m surprised you didn’t mention the old VW commercial where the guy drives around in a beetle shouting “2 pennies a mile!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=684937sSN1E
I remember that. My 2 cents worth.
It’s official, America no longer makes cents.
Bravo!
David Byrne: STOP MAKING CENTS
funny, beyond that, I can’t come up with a Heads lyric about money. Surprising considering all the songs about buildings and food an cities…
There’s something so wonderfully everyday Macgyver about the tire tread measure trick; I have one of those odd looking stick gauges (that elicits questions of WTF is that thing? People are always underwhelmed when I tell them) but it’s much more satisfying using a penny for a good enough? check.
I don’t need any fancy gage to check my tread depth. I go with the tried and true axiom of “Drive until you see the cords, then you have 10,000 miles left.”
I do love your avatar. “Jimmy! Jimmy! This can’t miss I swear!”
GREATEST. SHOW. EVER.
Which to my constant surprise has not been remade. I like to think Garner secretly brought the rights (maybe during the 90s tv movie era) and willed them to an heir in a nondescript manner, so try as they might, lazy studios can’t find who owns them.
Any remake without Garner in it does not make sense/ cents. To me.
And what would they have him drive?
Maybe somebody could convince GM to resurrect Pontiac and create and absolutely gorgeous new Firebird
Ugh – That old trope.
GM can’t even keep Camaro going – They would do any better rebadging it as a long-dead brand?
While we’re at it – let’s bring back LaSalle too.
Just call it the Chevrolet Pontiac Firebird.
There is precedent: Geos were officially titled as Chevrolets.
What is the remaining tread depth when the white wear indicators start to show?
I live on a street named after Eva Adams, the second woman director of the US Mint (she was appointed by JFK and fired by Nixon for being a Democrat). A numismatically significant address which I occasionally ponder when driving home. She would not have been pleased at this development.
I’m pretty sure the 14 pounds of pennies that have gone under my floor mats or are wedged in the seat cracks are hurting my gas mileage.
I paid a parking ticket at my Junior College in pennies.
And a friend with a Land Cruiser used pennies to fill screw holes in body panels with a MIG welder.
Floor in the stairwell of my bus is Pennies. And the holes from the seats being removed are covered and sealed with Pennies.