Why pennies cost more to mint than they're worth, in one picture | The Incidental Economist

Why pennies cost more to mint than they’re worth, in one picture

  October 22, 2010 at 12:04 pm

  Austin Frakt

It costs more than a cent to mint a penny (two cents, in fact). Nickels cost 9 cents to mint. Of course some of that is material costs. But there’s also the cost of the minting process itself:

Picture credit: Encyclopedia Britannica blog.

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- Comments (4)
- by DJMoore on October 25th, 2010 at 15:04
  
  Forgive a non-economist for asking an perhaps ignorant question, but isn’t the real problem that cents are so inflated that they don’t cover the total cost of making pennies?
  
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- by James on October 25th, 2010 at 18:11
  
  @DJMoore,
  
  No, because a penny can be spent more than once.
  
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- by DJMoore on October 25th, 2010 at 18:31
  
  So, you’re essentially saying that the value of a penny is $0.01 times the number of times the coin is spent until it’s withdrawn from circulation times (I’m guessing) some constant?
  
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- by Richard on October 26th, 2010 at 00:42
  
  Perhaps the relevant point is that small coins — pennies and nickles are perhaps and increasingly obsolete manifesttation of a technology and economic methodology that isas obsolete as dial telephones.
  
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