What About Making Pennies From Aluminum?

I have a few sample coins from other nations that are made from aluminum. We all know that the cost of metal exceeds whether copper or zinc exceeds the value of a cent. It seems that a lot of Americans would like to keep the penny. (But not all-as I said previously-on a trip to New York City years ago-I never saw a penny). So is it possible for the treasury to mint aluminum pennies an save (god forbid) the taxpayers some money?

 

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It been considered before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_aluminum_cent

 

Ah, yes, the aluminum cent. Well, the metal a coin is made from has a lot to do with politics, as strange as that might seem. Washington has lobbyist that work for people interested in having THIER metal used, so they pressure the committees and groups that have the job of determine what metal is used, thus we get zinc with very little copper for our cent.

 

Go to your local grocery store and buy a roll of aluminum foil. Then try and convince me it’s cost effective.

 

Why not try a plastic? Make it cool-looking, like a translucent color.

 

That's been considered also. In 1943, the Mint considered several other materials, including plastic, to make cents, but finally decided on the zinc-coated steel cent.

 

Why not be like canada!!!just stop producing cents and a decade later.Billions are still around and saving a lot of money in the process for other things.

 

No aluminum cents. I need the aluminum for my soft drink cans.
Just get rid of the cent and nickel. When you shop and pay for the
purchase just round THE TOTAL to the nearest dime. If four cents
is going to cripple you financially, then don't make the purchase.

 

The moment they did it the cost of aluminum would go up and make it too costly. It's why they haven't done it.

They could do what they do now except for zinc, use a steel core and plate it with copper. Then the cost would be less than a cent.

The reason they don't is because it's hard to plate steel with copper until you've plated it with nickel or used some proprietary costly solutions to treat the steel so the copper will stick uniformly.

 

Canada has systematically removed nickel bearing coins from circulation since 2004. Alloy Recovery Program
Canada produced cents in plated steel 2000-2012 when they discontinued it.
The 25% nickel content of the US 5 cent coin assures it will soon be changedhttps://canadiancoinnews.com/alloy-recovery-program-keeps-canadians-pocket-change-fresh/

 

What About Making Pennies From Aluminum?

What about not making ANY pennies anymore?
(Except maybe for collector sets.)

 

There's really no point to pennies anymore as there are many threads about this.
Cash is being used less and less, and people just leave the pennies in the change cup at the self serve they don't want them. I agree with Potty Dollar post #7,
but people have tried to convince me there would soon be a penny "shortage".
Billions have been produced every year for decades, besides what is in circulation,
sitting around in bags and rolls and vaults, every house has a jar of pennies (in the US) adding up to billions more being unused. I bet if they stopped producing them,
they would still circulate for 30 years. You can round everything up or down to the nearest nickel (if not paying the exact amount in cash) credit cards and checks could still pay the exact amount, because you are just moving "digits" from one side of the page to the other.

 

Currently, aluminum is going for about $3,400 per metric ton (about $1.55/lb) versus zinc at $3,850 per metric ton (about $1.75/lb) ... not enough cheaper to justify a switch. Worse, both have been rising sharply in price this year as manufacturing and construction are increasing due to ending of COVID restrictions. The only cheap metal is lead (about ½ the cost of zinc or aluminum on a weight basis), but it’s hardly suitable for coins. Lead is much denser than zinc or aluminum, so a coin of comparable weight would be a lot smaller in volume. Even with lead, it would cost more than one cent to make a penny when manufacturing, transportation, administration and other costs are added in.

Plastic would have acceptance, longevity, and machine handling problems.

At some point, the cent will have more than $0.01 worth of metal in it, and that will be the end of it, similar to what happened to silver coinage in the early ‘60s. Forget whether it’s legal or not to melt coins … it will happen if there is profit in it. Much easier to do with zinc than silver because zinc can be melted with a propane flame.

Cal

 

Just stop making cents altogether, and while you are at it drop the nickel also.

 

Remember the Barney Miller episode where Harris is looking for an investment, and they arrested a guy who says he is from the future. He tells Harris to forget gold and silver and to buy zinc. He calls his broker for a quote and after he tells him the price he says "Per pound?" Yeah well I might be interested in a couple of tons.
While we don't "need" the nickel at all, if you were to eliminate cents,
(you would still have plenty of cents and nickels in circulation), you could
feasibly change the content of the nickel, to make it 1 cent or so to produce.
People always say OMG it cost 7 cents or 8 cents to produce a nickel! But that 1 nickel is used thousands of times in transactions in it's lifetime. I don't think the cost compared to the face value is an accurate assessment.
And after the metal content, you would have to factor in salaries of mint workers, machines, maintenance, utilities, etc. which would drive the price of the manufacture of every single coin much higher than just the metal content.

 

On commodity exchanges, the trading unit of zinc is 25 metric tons. Try putting that in your basement.

Cal

 

I don't know what it was in the late 1970's. But a good point.

 

At the point we have to resort to crappy coin metals like zinc, aluminum, and steel, it's time to retire those coins.

However, my cynical side says this won't happen for a long time still simply because our government demonstrates that they are committed to waste wherever possible.

I've noticed the 7-11 near me is already rounding change to the nearest nickel, and the penny tray on the counter is always empty. It would bother me to be shorted (even a cent or two, it's still my money) except that they round up also. Seems they have taken the lead themselves on what Canada already did.

 

Even going back to WW2 tokens would be better than the zinc crap we have now. Aluminum's not a bad idea either. Thanks for sharing the idea. Be safe.

 

I think that buying 5-8 million pounds of aluminum planchets (enough to make 1-4 billion coins for a year), would be a little cheaper per lb than buying a 75 foot roll of aluminum foil at a supermarket.