You probably have a jar of them. Maybe they’re shoved into the cup holder of your car, sticky with old soda, or gathering dust in a ceramic pig on your dresser. We're talking about the penny. That copper-plated zinc disc that seems to have more value as a floor decoration than actual currency.
It feels like we should have stopped making them years ago, right?
Yet, when you look at the raw data from the United States Mint, the numbers are staggering. We aren't just making a few million to keep the collectors happy. We are churning them out by the billions. Honestly, it’s a logistics machine that never sleeps. If you’ve ever wondered how many pennies are made per year, the answer changes annually based on the economy, but it’s almost always a number that’s hard to wrap your head around.
The billion-cent breakdown
The U.S. Mint produces billions of coins every single year. In a typical year, pennies make up the vast majority of that production. For example, back in 2020, the Mint produced over 7.5 billion pennies. Think about that. Seven and a half billion. Even in "slower" years like 2023, the number hovered around 4.5 billion.
Why so many?
People lose them. That’s the simplest answer. Unlike a twenty-dollar bill, which you’ll chase down the street if it blows away, most people don’t care if a penny falls out of their pocket. They fall into couch cushions. They get vacuumed up. They end up in landfills. Because they don’t circulate back into the banking system at the same rate as quarters or dimes, the Mint has to keep pumping "fresh blood" into the economy just to keep exact change possible at the grocery store.
The Philadelphia and Denver facilities handle the heavy lifting. You can tell where yours came from by looking for a tiny "D" under the date for Denver, or no mark at all for Philly. They work around the clock. Huge coils of ready-made zinc blanks are fed into presses that strike them with 35 to 40 tons of pressure. It’s a violent, noisy process that happens thousands of times a minute.
The cost of a cent
Here is the part that drives economists crazy. It costs more than one cent to make a penny.
A lot more.
According to the 2023 Annual Report from the U.S. Mint, the unit cost to produce and ship a single one-cent coin was about 3.07 cents. We are literally spending three cents to create one cent of value. If that sounds like a bad business model, you’re right. It is. The Mint lost over $90 million just on penny production in a single fiscal year. This loss is technically offset by "seigniorage"—the profit the government makes on higher-denomination coins like quarters, which cost much less than 25 cents to make—but it still stings.
Why the volume fluctuates
You might notice that the number of pennies made per year isn't a flat line on a graph. It spikes and dips.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw a massive "coin shortage." It wasn't that the coins disappeared; it was that the "velocity" of money stopped. People weren't going out. They weren't dropping change into jars at coffee shops. Laundromats were empty. Because the circular flow of coins broke down, the Mint actually had to ramp up production to make up for the coins sitting in people's homes.
Inflation also plays a role. As prices go up, the utility of the penny goes down. You can't buy anything for a penny anymore. Not a piece of gum, not a stamp, nothing. This has led to a slow, decade-long trend of production decreasing. In the early 2000s, it wasn't uncommon to see 10 billion or even 13 billion pennies produced in a single year. We are nowhere near those levels today.
Metal markets and the zinc factor
The penny isn't actually copper. Not really. Since 1982, pennies have been 97.5% zinc with a thin copper coating. If they were still solid copper, they’d be worth nearly three cents just in scrap metal, and people would be melting them down in their backyards.
The price of zinc on the global commodities market dictates how much the government loses on every coin. When zinc prices spike, the "how many pennies are made per year" question becomes a political lightning bolt. Lawmakers start asking why we're still doing this.
The "Kill the Penny" debate
There is a very vocal group of people—including some former Mint officials and economists like Greg Mankiw—who believe we should follow Canada’s lead. Canada got rid of their penny in 2013. They just round cash transactions to the nearest five cents. It works fine.
But in the U.S., the penny has some powerful friends.
The zinc industry, for one, spends a decent amount of money lobbying to keep the penny alive. Then there are the charities. Think about the "pennies for patients" drives or the jars at the gas station. Those small donations add up to millions of dollars for nonprofits. If you remove the penny, that "passive" giving might vanish.
There's also the "rounding tax" fear. People worry that if we get rid of pennies, businesses will always round up, effectively raising prices. Research generally shows this isn't true—it tends to even out over time—but the perception is hard to fight.
What the future looks like
Will we be asking about penny production numbers in 2030? Maybe.
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The Mint has explored alternative metals. They've looked at steel, like they used during World War II, but the cost savings were negligible once you factored in the cost of recalibrating every vending machine and coin-counting rack in the country.
Right now, the Mint produces pennies based on orders from the Federal Reserve. As long as banks keep asking for them, the Mint will keep striking them. It's a supply-and-demand loop that is currently decoupled from the actual value of the currency.
Rare finds in the billions
Even though billions are made, some are "more equal" than others. If you’re digging through a fresh roll of 2024 pennies, you’re looking for errors. Doubled dies, off-center strikes, or "mules."
Because the volume is so high, quality control occasionally slips. A coin that was struck twice or has a weird smudge on Lincoln’s face can turn a $0.01 piece of zinc into a $500 collector's item. This is the irony of the penny: the more "worthless" we say they are, the more people obsess over the weird ones.
Actionable steps for your change
If you're tired of being part of the reason the Mint has to make 5 billion new coins this year, there are a few things you can actually do.
First, empty your jars. Taking your coins to a Coinstar or a local credit union puts that metal back into circulation. It reduces the demand for the Mint to strike new ones. If every American household emptied their penny jars today, the Mint could likely stop production for an entire year.
Second, check for the 1943 copper penny. It’s the holy grail. Almost all 1943 pennies were steel. If you find one from that year that sticks to a magnet, it’s worth a few cents. If it doesn't stick to a magnet, it's copper, and you might be looking at a six-figure payday.
Third, watch the U.S. Mint's monthly production reports. They publish these online. It’s a weirdly fascinating look at the health of the economy. When penny production drops significantly, it’s often a sign of shifting consumer behavior or a massive change in metal prices.
Lastly, don't throw them away. It's actually illegal to melt them down for their metal content, and dumping them in the trash is just a waste of resources. If you don't want them, give them to a kid or put them in a charity jar. Let the "worthless" coin do a little bit of work before it eventually finds its way back to a bank vault.
The penny is a survivor. It has outlived its own purchasing power by decades. While the numbers of pennies made per year are slowly trending downward, they aren't hitting zero anytime soon. Lincoln is staying put on that copper-colored disc for the foreseeable future.