As a kid, I had a little leather pouch that I had taken from my mom, who picked it up on a field trip to a Native American reservation when she was a kid. Inside it, I kept a very small but very interesting coin collection – at least for a kid. I never met a kid who wasn’t interested in coins from some other country. At some point, even adults became fascinated by the variety of American coins, with the 50-state quarters, the golden Sacajawea dollar, and so many others.
I had to rely on the travels of others to bring back coins from various places, but today there are whole sets of coins you can buy to get started.
These days, though, our most common coins are perhaps the most interesting. Made of a combination of copper and zinc, the penny is worth only one cent, but in 2022, it costs 2.72 cents to mint one of these coins. Nickels also cost more to produce than they are worth. The price of one nickel is 10.41 cents, and 2022 marks the seventh consecutive year these coins have held a value less than the price of production.
Why, then, do we continue to produce coins worth less than their cost of production? The official answer is that the US Mint is funded by selling coins to the Federal Reserve, and dimes, quarters, and half dollars still cost less than the face value of the coins. In other words, the US Mint loses tens of millions of dollars every year on pennies and nickels but still comes out ahead with the other coins.
So why continue to lose money? I think the answer to that question is the same as the reason that we still insist on having downtowns, in-person meetings, and remaking every song or movie that was popular a few decades ago. Change is forced upon us at every turn. Our babies grow up. Relationships mature, change, and sometimes dissolve. We watch our favorite teachers and mentors pass away, as we start to feel time catching up with us.
In our rebellious nature, we hold on to any beloved parts of the past that we can. Yes, we look forward to wonderful new advancements like debit cards and apps for sending cash, but there is something about knowing the coins that helped teach us to count are still there. There is something about knowing the little ladies are still sitting in that same church pew, even when we don’t make it home – until they aren’t. We live our lives unconsciously taking for granted the existence of things we loved until the day that we look up and find they are no longer there.
So the next time, you see a penny on the ground, pick it up. Spending it may not get you much, but we are lucky that we still get to hold onto it for at least a little longer.