Woodway, Texas coin shop owner discusses whether end of production will increase the value of pennies

WOODWAY, Texas (KWTX) – Penny production could soon be no more after President Donald Trump announced Sunday that he has ordered the U.S. Treasury Department to stop making pennies.

The reason for this, President Trump says, is because of the production cost. According to the U.S. Mint, who produces the coins, each penny costs 3.7 cents to make.

While pennies don’t typically hold a lot of value, this announcement has caused many people to wonder how this will impact the billions of pennies already in circulation.

Jason Pack is the owner of Reliable Coins Gold & Silver in Woodway, a shop with coins of all sorts of value. One coin they have plenty of in their collection is the penny, otherwise known as the Lincoln cent.

According to Pack, “the penny goes back to 1792, and then we had different designs.”

But despite the coin having been in production for the last 233 years, Pack says the move to stop production doesn’t really surprise him.

“People just don’t even use change very much anymore,” he shared, “we just see our money as not worth what it used to be, but the production to make it is getting higher.”

But how does that impact the value of the penny? Pack says it likely won’t have any.

“I’ve already seen some talks that people think that you know Lincoln cents are going to be worth more because they stopped making them, but the truth of the matter is it depends on how many they made,” he said.

He further explained that the number of pennies minted changes every year, but has gradually increased over the years.

“For example, in 1958 they made around 800 million. In 2024, they made about 3.2 billion,” Pack said.

Simply put, the more pennies minted that year, the less valuable they are. The number of pennies currently in circulation also determines their value.

“There’s over 250 billion Lincoln cents in circulation right now, so enough of them would have to be lost, damaged, used before the nice ones can go up in value,” he explained.

So while the economic impact of this is still unclear, or if congress will eventually stop the use of pennies, for now this won’t have a significant impact.

“At the end of the day it’s still only worth what it is in metal content and people are still gonna use them as you know a Lincoln cent, just one cent,” Pack said.

Now whether this is for sure happening or when exactly we can expect penny production to stop has yet to be confirmed, but this is something that has been discussed in the past and that several other countries have already done.

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