Toss the penny
The US Treasury plans to phase out its smallest coin. Will LA feel it’s loss?
Sat at a strip mall deli in Echo Park, Mario Mosqueda pulls out his loose change. (Photo by Samantha Lee)
By Samantha Lee
May. 3, 2025
LOS ANGELES – Mario Mosqueda, a retired mechanic, has been collecting pennies for years. Some - like a white coin from 1943 - are unique collectibles. He plans to one day use them to make artwork or decorate his tables and floors.
Mosqueda, 64, doesn’t see much point in pennies as, well, money.
“If I get charged $4.47, I give $4.50,” he said, “I mean I don’t have pennies, so I have to round up.”
In February, as one of the first decisions of his second term, President Trump announced he was going to order the U.S. Treasury to stop producing new pennies.
The move appears to signal an end to the one-cent, copper-colored coin – made up mostly of zinc.
The issue, as Trump and many others have noted, is that it costs more to make a penny than the penny is worth, which makes it a “wasteful” government expense.
Each penny cost 3.69 cents to make in 2024, up 20% from the 3.1 cents to make them the year before.
That’s equivalent to buying a dollar bill for $3.69, the Scottsdale Mint reported in an analysis.
It also noted that in 2005 – 20 short years ago – it cost less than a penny to make a penny: 0.97 cents, to be exact. The production price has been soaring since.
The U.S. Mint produced 3.17 billion pennies in 2024. Because it cost 3.69 cents to make each and every penny, the Mint essentially turned $31.7 million in face value into an $85.3 million loss.
David Gullety, economics professor at Bentley University, told CNBC the economics make no sense – with millions of pennies vanishing each year under couch cushions, the Mint has to keep making replacements.
Emily Meneses, 30, a journalist for Barista Magazine, shares a similar view. “I feel like no one really uses pennies anymore,” she said. “It just kind of keeps up more material than we need.”
Canada took its penny out of circulation in 2012.
It would not be the first time the United States has stopped making its least-valuable coin.
There used to be a half-penny. Until 1857.
In all, there are currently 114 billion pennies in circulation, or $1.14 billion, or 0.006% of U.S. money, CNBC reported.
All the same, it’s not just production costs at issue. As CNBC also reported, in 2015, one-third of all transactions in the United States were made in cash. Now the number falls under 20%, and is expected to continue to fall.
Marketing specialist Pierre Surpass, 28, of Los Angeles, said, “I think it's a loss to not have a tangible currency. But in today's society, we've adapted so far beyond that. Technology has just surpassed anything tangible at this point.”
Second-hand clothes seller Joy McCann, 20, of Simi Valley, California, runs a stall at the Silverlake Flea every weekend.
“I check out over 100 customers a weekend,” she said, “and maybe one person will give me change.”
She added, “So I round things to the dollar already.”
Joshua Vergara, 32, of Torrance, California, works in retail support. With the increasing import of electronic payments, getting rid of the penny, he said, won’t make much difference.
“I think it may affect prices for a few years, but after that, it’ll probably even out,” he said.
Miriam Romero, 27, a Santa Monica native, only ever pays electronically. But she recognizes the impact on non-card users.
“I do know others that don't have a bank account, or they're not able to access a bank account,” she said.
“I'm just thinking of how people are gonna go about proceeding with purchasing things when they have no means of accessing a credit card.”
San Diego-based artist Angel Castillo, 30, likes to sell in cash. She shared a similar worry.
“I do think that it’s an accessibility thing,” she said. “It's very easy for people to find coins on the ground. I'm speaking to people who are in situations of less accessibility to money in general.
“It's geared toward people who are already wealthy or have more reliance on the banking system and want to participate in the credit system, which is not for everyone.”
Even Mosqueda doesn’t trust credit cards. A few years ago, he got an alert for credit card fraud when there were spending charges at “some other place in the United States.
“From then on,” he said, “I just used cash.”
His friend, 71-year-old Jose Rodriguez agreed. “We’re older,” he said. “We’re more worried about having our credit stolen.”
“Once things change,” Mosqueda said, “we’ll have to use our cards…out of necessity.”
Several businesses still rely on coins. Socorro Pelez, 73, of Guadalajara, Mexico, goes to Echo Park Coin Laundry every week.
“I think it's not good. There won’t be enough cash around,” she said in Spanish. “What else are we going to do laundry with?”
Her daughter, Susana Pelez, 44, thinks that once the penny goes, all cash will be gone. “A lot of places are not accepting cash, but we just don’t go there as much now,” she said. “This is affecting older people, like my mother. The rest of us can adapt, but them? Not as much.”
Pelez feels like she’s running out of options, and the only choice may be to move away.
“Maybe some use cards, but as poorer people, we need cash,” she said. “It’s gotten too expensive here to live the life we used to live in this country.”