Save your pennies!

President Donald Trump recently announced that he has instructed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to have the Treasury Department stop making new pennies, explaining that it costs more than two cents to make them! 

"For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents," DJT wrote in a post on Truth Social. "This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let’s rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it’s a penny at a time."

Actually it costs more than three cents per cent. Last month, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) wrote in a post on X, "The penny costs over 3 cents to make and cost US taxpayers over $179 million in FY2023. The Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in FY2023, around 40% of the 11.4 billion coins for circulation produced."

It's worth noting too that the quality of the ersatz copper cents -- they're actually zinc with a thin veneer of copper -- ain't what it used to be, just like everything else in today's America. Check out the example at left.

So full of flaws and errors are America's coins that Lincoln Memorial pennies with errors or in high grades can be rare and valuable. The one pictured is offered on eBay for a mere $25,000.

A 1986 penny with the text "In Sod We Trust" instead of "In God We Trust" is rare and sought-after. A 1986 penny missing the layer of copper cladding is rarer still. Even a cut or nick or extra piece of metal (known as a "cud") on the rim of the coin, also known as a cud can be worth hundreds of times the coin's nominal value.

Although production of new pennies has been halted, the cent has not yet been officially demonetized as it was in Canada in 2012. See "Canada doesn't make cents any more", WWW 20/12/12.

In that piece, Walt had made a very sensible suggestion, which he now passes on to Elon Musk [who we assume reads WWW. Ed.] If the US government, ever decides to follow the lead of the frugal frostbacks, here's Walt's can't-miss cost recovery plan. 

Sell the old pennies to Zimbabwe! They use US dollars there but they have no coins because they can't afford to import any. So ship them Amereican pennies at, say, half their face value, plus S+H, plus taxes and tariffs, and they should fetch pretty close to... well, millions and millions -- way more than the expected revenue from recycling.

You're welcome, Mr Musk! No need to write a letter of thanks. A check will do nicely.

Signs of the inflationary times

So, farewell, then, to penny postage. The humble one-cent stamp, along with 2s, 3s, 4s and other practically worthless values have been quietly discontinued ["cancelled"? Geddit? Ed.] by Canada Post.

A hundred years ago, a one-cent stamp, with the likeness of George V, the Sailor King, was all you needed to send a postcard a mari usque ad mare -- from Squamish BC, let's say, to Dildo NL.

Today, that would cost you, for just one stamp, C$1.15 (84 cents in real money)... plus sales tax! Can you, dear American reader, imagine having to pay tax on postage stamps? If you're foolish enough to move to Canuckistan when Donald Trump is re-elected, that's what you'll have to do to help pay for Trudeau's refugee-friendly welfare state.

That $1.15, by the way, covers the postage -- still just one cent -- plus $1.14 for storage!

A hundred years ago, you could have paid for your one-cent stamp with a copper -- well, copper-coloured -- one cent coin, affectionately known as a penny. The pennies of that time were roughly the size of a modern US penny, but to numismatists they are known as "small cents", being about half the size of the "large cents" -- roughly the same as a British half-penny -- which had preceded them.

Alas, you can no longer find a Canadian penny to pay for a one-cent stamp. As Walt reported in "Canada doesn't make cents any more" (WWW 20/12/12), one-cent coins were declared surplus to requirements in 2012, since they would no longer purchase a single thing, not even a single stamp, which would have cost, including the sales tax, 1.15 cents.

I tell you this sad tale, Canadian readers, to remind you how, under a succession of Liberal (and sometimes Cuckservative) governments, your beaverbucks have become "progressively" (geddit?) devalued. 

Dear American readers, you need not be so smug because (you might say) you still have one-cent stamps and your precious pennies, not to mention dollar bills, which Canada doesn't have either. The fires of Bidenflation are raging like California [Isn't that where Hock Ptui is from? Ed.] wildfires. Time to put them out with the hose of common cents. Geddit?!