It now costs almost 2 cents to produce a penny. 25 years ago when there was a spike in copper prices, pennies changed to almost all zinc with a copper coating. Now prices of zinc have increased to push the cost of a penny from 1.2 cents to 1.7 cents in just the past year. Since 2003, the price of zinc has increased 450%.
Solutions include using steel or aluminum instead of zinc. There has also been a push to get rid of the penny all together, simply rounding up or down to the nearest nickel. Of course the nickel costs almost 10 cents to make itself.
what we really need is paper change. or cyber coins. that would work.
ReplyDelete