Pennies aren’t cheap. 
 
 The one-cent US coin, mostly made of zinc with a little bit of copper, is the most abundant coin in the country. Last year, the US Mint produced more than 8.4 billion pennies for circulation. Between production costs and shipping, they cost $0.0182 each, which totaled to $69 million (pdf, p. 9) in losses compared to their total value—the biggest in nine years. This is likely due to the rising cost of zinc for use in heavy industry, construction, machine and ship building, and steel production. 
 
 Nickels have cost more to make than their monetary value for over a decade. The five-cent coins—75% copper and 25% nickel—cost about seven cents each to produce last year. Prices for copper have surgedIt’s a key ingredient in any kind of circuit or wiring, and the rise of electric cars in particular has put stress on the market. Nickel has also gotten more expensive for its use in stainless steels. 
 
 Fortunately, dimes and quarters are cheaper to make, costing less than their monetary value. So the Mint makes up the losses incurred on pennies and nickels with its 10- and 25-cent coins, and last year reported making $391.5 million in seigniorage. ||||| In 2013, the cost of making pennies and nickels exceeded their face value for the eighth year in a row. The cost of minting a penny stood at 1.8 cents, nearly twice its face value. Nickels cost twice as much as dimes – 9.4 cents vs. 4.6 cents – despite being worth only half as much. 
 
 For a better cost comparison, we can look at the price of putting one dollar’s worth of each denomination into circulation. The U.S. Treasury spends nearly two dollars for every dollar of nickels and pennies it pumps into the economy. In contrast, the same amount of quarters and dimes costs the government less than 50 cents. A dollar bill is even cheaper, coming in at less than a quarter. 
 
 Historically, nickels and pennies have always been more expensive on a per-dollar basis than dimes and quarters – this makes sense, since it takes a lot more metal to make 100 pennies than it does to make four quarters. But the government only began losing money on nickels and pennies in 2006. 
 
 For some historical perspective I obtained 30 years of coin manufacturing costs from the U.S. Mint, which are plotted below on a cost-per-dollar basis. The chart shows that manufacturing costs rose gradually from 1984 until roughly 2005, at which point nickel and penny costs began to spike dramatically. 
 
 Why the spike? Minting costs are primarily driven by the costs of the metals used to produce the coins – copper and nickel for the nickel, and copper and zinc for the penny. As those costs rose in the first half of the 21st century, the U.S. Mint began losing money on pennies and nickels. 
 
 All told, the Mint (and ultimately, U.S. taxpayers) lost $105 million on the production of pennies and nickels last year. $105 million may be pocket change compared to last year’s budget deficit of $680 billion, but in an era of budgetary austerity it’s enough to make politicians take notice. 
 
 Chief among them is President Obama, who included a provision in his 2015 budget to “assess the future of currency” and ultimately develop “alternative options for the penny and nickel.” What those “alternative options” might be is deliberately left vague. 
 
 The least controversial approach would be to simply change the metal composition of the coins to make them less expensive. Canadian nickels, for example, are 95% steel, which makes them cheaper to produce than their American cousins. As of last year, Canadian nickels still cost less than their face value. 
 
 The other option would be to discontinue pennies and nickels entirely – Canada ditched its pennies when their production cost approached 1.6 cents, well below what U.S. pennies cost now. 
 
 To be fair, the penny has plenty of supporters in the general public. A 2012 survey by penny lobbying firm ‘Americans for Common Cents’ – funded, not surprisingly, by the zinc industry – found that 2/3rds of Americans favored keeping the penny. While any poll conducted by a lobbying outfit should be treated with skepticism, it’s probably safe to say that the penny and nickel hold special places in many Americans’ hearts – see, for starters, the remarkable number of penny-centric phrases and idioms in English. 
 
 Past attempts to discontinue penny production have been thwarted by the zinc industry (pennies are 97.5% zinc), and Coinstar, which operates the change-redeeming kiosks that are ubiquitous in U.S. grocery stores, as David Owen reported in The New Yorker in 2008. 
 
 But these attempts didn’t happen in the context of a global recession, anemic recovery, and subsequent appetite for belt-tightening on Capitol Hill. Pennies and nickels represent $105 million worth of low-hanging fruit on the budgetary tree. 
 
 Moreover, millions of Americans have demonstrated their willingness to pay actual money to Coinstar – 10.9 cents on the dollar – to get rid of their unwanted change. Maybe it’s time for Congress to step up and do that job for free. ||||| President Barack Obama finally broke his silence on an issue of national importance Friday – he thinks it’s time to retire the penny. 
 
 The possible extinction of the one-cent coin was a featured economic question in a Google+ Hangout with the Commander in Chief last week as John Green, the co-creator of a popular YouTube channel, applied a little presidential peer pressure. 
 
 “Australia, Canada, New Zealand, many other countries have gotten rid of their pennies,” Green said. “Why haven’t we done it?” 
 
 “I gotta tell you, John, I don’t know,” Obama responded, adding, “Anytime we’re spending money on something people don’t actually use, that’s an example of things we should probably change.” 
 
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 But why should anyone care? They’re pennies. Aren’t there more valuable things to worry about? 
 
 First, pennies actually cost more to make than they’re worth. In 2012, every penny cost 2.41 cents to make – more than twice their face value. 
 
 And as zinc and copper – materials used in minting the penny – have become costlier due, in part, to manufacturing shifts in China, which are likely to raise costs further. 
 
 Granted, the total cost of minting pennies was only $58 million last year – less than one-tenth of a percent of total federal spending in 2012 – but groups like Citizens to Retire the U.S. Penny have long been making the economic case for getting rid of the penny (plus, the group adds, fishing for pennies adds about 2 seconds to each cash transaction per day). 
 
 And the U.S. military has already decided they’re essentially useless; all Army and Air Force Exchange Service stores on bases round all cash purchases up or down to the nearest nickel. 
 
 With both parties looking for ways to cut government spending, it seems as though cutting penny production could be a relatively painless, if insignificant, place to start. But in the Google+ Hangout, Obama ceded that Washington has bigger fiscal fish to fry. 
 
 “The penny is an example of something that I need legislation for,” he said. “And, frankly, given all of the big issues that we have to deal with day-in/day-out, a lot of times it just doesn't -- you know, we're not able to get to it.” 
 
 There have actually been efforts to pass penny-banning legislation. Back in 2001, then-Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) introduced the “Legal Tender Modernization Act,” which would have made pennies obsolete by requiring retailers to round up or down to the nearest nickel on cash purchases. 
 
 That bill failed, and Kolbe’s second attempt in 2006, the “Currency Overhaul for an Industrious Nation (COIN) Act,” after zinc costs nearly doubled, met a similar fate. 
 
 But the president doesn’t need Congress to explore other, cheaper alternatives to zinc – the main metal in pennies. In fact, the administration’s 2013 budget encourages the Treasury to “explore, analyze, and approve new, less-expensive metals for all circulating coins like aluminum, iron and lead.” 
 
 It wouldn’t be the first time Abe Lincoln’s coin got a makeover. Back in 1982, the penny changed from 95 percent copper and 5 percent zinc to 97.5 percent zinc and 2.5 percent copper. 
 
 (And lest so-called “penny hoarders” try to melt that valuable pre-1982 copper down, the Mint in 2006 prohibited the melting of pennies and nickels. It also made it a crime to carry more than $5 in one and five-cent coins out of the country). 
 
 Changes to the composition of pennies do have Congressional champions: Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers (R) introduced the “Cents and Sensibility Act” in December 2011, which would mandate that pennies were out of American steel (much of which comes from the Buckeye State) and dipped in copper. 
 
 But these efforts will be met with some serious resistance from the zinc lobby (yes, there is one). The company Jarden Zinc, which creates “metal and zinc coinage,” according to its website, paid lobbyist Mark Weller $340,000 in 2012 to discuss issues related to “minting/money/gold standard” with members of Congress and the Mint, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. 
 
 Weller also represents the pro-penny group Americans for Common Cents, whose website warns of the risk of inflation that eliminating the penny would bring, and whose headquarters are on K Street, known for its many D.C. lobbyist offices. 
 
 “Americans for Common Cents aims to inform and educate policymakers, consumers, and the media about the penny’s economic, cultural, and historical significance,” the group’s website reads. 
 
 The political power of the penny is likely another reason Obama hasn’t acted on getting rid of it. As far back as 2008, when he was still a candidate, the “penny lobby” appeared to mystify Obama. 
 
 Asked about it at a town hall in Pennsylvania, he said, “We have been trying to eliminate the penny for quite some time -- it always comes back,” joking, “I need to find out who is lobbying to keep the penny.” 
 
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– It costs more than a penny to make a penny. The US Mint produced more than 8.4 billion of the one-cent coins last year, at a cost of $0.0182 each with production costs and shipping taken into account. That means $69 million was lost when compared to the pennies' total value, Quartz reports, the biggest loss in nine years. That's probably because zinc (pennies are made mostly of zinc, with a small amount of copper) has been rising in price. Nickels, which are worth five cents, cost seven cents each to make, but dimes and quarters cost less than their value to produce, which ends up making up for the losses associated with pennies and nickels. Even so, petitions abound on the internet to abolish the penny and nickel.