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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 1496420, member: 66&quot;]When will the cent end?&nbsp; Hard to say since it seems to be up to the politicians in Washington and they can seldom do anything simple quickly.&nbsp; The cent should have been discontinued 30 years ago in 82.&nbsp; It absolutely should have ended about 15 years ago when it started costing more to make that the face value.&nbsp; The fact they have been making it for the past five years losing two cents or more for every cent they make is absolutely a no brainer that it should be discontinued.&nbsp; Yet they still have not done anything serious about ending it and the materials study for possible alternative materials to make it out of isn&#039;t supposed to report back til the end of the year (Which will report on a couple of possibilities for cheaper materials, but considering the labor&nbsp; and othe related costs are 2 cents apiece it doesn&#039;t really matter what they make them out of they will lose money) it seems to me that the absolute earliest they would stop it would be 2015.&nbsp; And even then they will probably continue making them for collectors.</p><p><br /></p><p>The fire at the Mint had absolutely nothing to do with the lack of 1815 cents.&nbsp; The fire occurred Jan 11th 1816 and destroyed the mints rolling mills where gold and silver was rolled into strip.&nbsp; The copper coins were struck on ready made planchets shipped from Boulton and Watt in England though so that is why in 1816 the ONLY coins struck were cents.&nbsp; No gold or silver could be processed until the new steam powered rolling mill could be acquired and the new building built to house it.&nbsp; (The last cent planchets from Boulton ordered before the war arrived May 9th 1812.&nbsp; These 20 tons of planchets were mostly struck in 1812 and some were struck in 1813.&nbsp; In Nov 1813 orders came not to strike any more copper coin and the order held until Sept 1814 when the last 400K planchets were struck.&nbsp; No further copper could be ordered until after the formal ratification of the peace treaty in Feb 1815.&nbsp; At that point planchets were ordered but they did not arrive until late Dec 1815.&nbsp; Cent striking was begun immediately with 1816 dated dies.)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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