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

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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Austin Frakt

Austin Frakt, PhD, is co-Editor-in-Chief of The Incidental Economist and tweets at @afrakt. His day job is Director of the Partnered Evidence-based Policy Resource Center at the Boston VA Healthcare System, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He is also a Professor with the Department of Health Law, Policy and Management at the Boston University’s School of Public Health, a Principal Research Scientist with the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Health Services Research.

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