In the movie “Grease,” there’s an old adage used: “See a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck.”
That may be happening a lot less often these days.
President Donald Trump decided earlier this year to stop minting pennies, a decision that appears to have banks and retailers scrambling.
Merchants in many areas of the country have run out of pennies and are unable to produce exact change, according to a report from The Associated Press. Banks are unable to order fresh pennies and are rationing pennies for their customers.
One convenience store chain, Sheetz, got so desperate for pennies that it briefly ran a promotion offering a free soda to customers who bring in 100 pennies, according to the AP.. Another retailer says the lack of pennies will end up costing it millions this year, because of the need to round down to avoid lawsuits.
“It’s a chunk of change,” Dylan Jeon, senior director of government relations with the National Retail Federation, told the AP.
The penny problem started in late summer and is only getting worse as the country heads into the holiday shopping season.
No one is saying the penny should stick around. They’re heavy, especially in bulk, and are more often than not used exclusively to give customers change. But the abrupt decision to get rid of the penny has come with no guidance from the federal government. Many stores have been left pleading for Americans to pay in exact change.
“We have been advocating abolition of the penny for 30 years. But this is not the way we wanted it to go,” Jeff Lenard with the National Association of Convenience Stores, told the AP.
Trump announced in February that the U.S. would no longer mint pennies, citing the high costs. The Mint spent 3.7 cents to make a penny in 2024, according to its most recent annual report, and it spends 13.8 cents to make a nickel, the AP wrote.
“Let’s rip the waste out of our great nation’s budget, even if it’s a penny at a time,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The Treasury Department said in May that it was placing its last order of copper-zinc planchets — the blank metal disks that are minted into coins. In June, the last pennies were minted and by August, those pennies were distributed to banks and armored vehicle service companies.
The U.S. Mint issued 3.23 billion pennies in 2024, the last full year of production, more than double that of the second-most minted coin in the country: the quarter. But the problem with pennies is they are issued, given as change, and rarely recirculated back into the economy. Americans store their pennies in jars or use them for decoration. This requires the Mint to produce significant sums of pennies each year.
The government is expected to save $56 million by not minting pennies, according to the Treasury Department.
