So, You Want to Get Rid of the Penny. Do You Have a Plan for the Nickel?

President Trump recently ordered the U.S. Mint to stop producing pennies, for a simple-sounding reason. Each penny, he said, has “literally cost us more than 2 cents.”

He’s right. Since 2006, the government has spent more money minting pennies than those pennies have been worth.

The production costs of coins can be confusing. A nickel is worth half as much as a dime but costs twice as much to mint. A penny, which used to cost less than 1 cent to make, now costs 3.7. In 2011, a quarter was cheaper to make than a nickel; today the two coins cost about the same.

It’s almost impossible to meaningfully lower the costs of coin production. If savings is the top priority, stopping production altogether is the only real option, for the simple reason that production costs are tied to the prices of specific materials (mostly zinc for pennies, mostly copper for nickels). Rhett Jeppson, a former chief executive of the U.S. Mint, said he saw some interesting proposals in his time there, including the idea of making pennies out of plastic, but nothing that could be put into practice.