How will the composition change of the penny effect us?

If the US mint stopped making them today, would the price of copper go down? I know our cents are only 2.5 percent copper, but it seems stopping the production and use of so much copper might have an effect on copper prices, or would this be a negligible effect?

 

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Zinc prices - maybe - copper prices I doubt it.

 

They have made 3 billion cents this year. Each one contains .05 grams of copper so they have used 165 tons of copper. Annual production of copper is around 15 million tons per year. I don't think stopping the cent will have an effect on copper prices.

Those 3 billion cents used 8,100 tons of zinc. Annual production is 10.7 million tons so the cent is about one tenth of one percent of the annual zinc production. I don't think it would have much effect there either.