NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump talks of big change in his second term of office. But he's not forgetting small change, either.
Trump ordered the Treasury Department to stop making pennies with a Feb. 10 sentence on his social media account that followed years of conservatives pointing out that putting a copper-coated zinc disc in your pocket costs the government more than a cent — almost 4 cents today.
Will Trump's order make the penny disappear? There is no sign that the U.S. Mint will stop pressing pennies in Denver and Philadelphia, and Mint officials did not respond to requests for clarification this week.
But the presidential penny pledge is already being felt in one niche world. It's a little-known world that depends on buying pennies wholesale, loading them into machines and persuading parents to feed a few dollars into machines that stamp designs on the pennies — Paw Patrol, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — as they are stretched between metal rollers at fun fairs.
Small orbits of collectors and craftsmen have developed around them. And without the penny, the whole thing faces an uncertain future.
The last pennies?
New copper pennies vanished from circulation in 1982 — 73 years after the first Lincoln penny was minted — and were replaced by zinc-coated ones. The old ones are more pliable and easier to stamp, making them hot items for kids at fun fairs.
“They’ll clean ’em so when they elongate the dino or shark of the printed coin it maintains a ghost image of the printed head of Lincoln,” said Brian Peters, general manager of Minnesota-based Penny Press Machine Co. “Pre-1982 copper pennies, they bring those.”
Jeweler Angelo Rosato worked for decades in the 1960's and '70s hand-printing pennies with scenes of their New Milford, Connecticut, hometown and historical and sentimental scenes. Everything was obsessively catalogued, including more than 4,000 penny photographs.
“We’re big fans of the penny. Keep the penny," said Aaron Zablow of Roseland, New Jersey, who was with two of his sons at the American Dream Mall.
“I like the pennies,” his 9-year-old son Mason said.
Some don't want the United States to stop making cents
Critics say the rise of electronic commerce and the billions of pennies in circulation mean the U.S. could stop printing the copper coins tomorrow and see little widespread effect for decades. But some people are watching fearfully to see if Trump’s public critique of the penny will affect their business.
Alan Fleming, of Scotland, is the owner of Penny Press Factory, one of a number around the world that manufacture machines that flatten and stamp coins.