Minting pennies is a loss-maker that Elon Musk and DOGE want to stop

In one of the first DOGE posts on X after the department was established, it highlighted the well-known oddity that each individual penny costs more than 3 cents to make and distribute.

It also wrongly claimed that producing the coin set US taxpayers back more than $179 million in FY23. (That figure was the loss of minting pennies and nickels that year.) However, the point still stands: America loses money while making some of its money, with the cost of making each denomination only rising in 2024.

Nickels have managed to escape some of the heat from Musk and co. and have generally been excluded from many of the anti-penny arguments that have cropped up in recent years, often owing to the fact that we mint far fewer of them, but they’ve also cost more to make than they’re worth since 2006. Last year, the Mint spent 13.78 cents to make and distribute every nickel, meaning that the 202 million five-cent coins that entered circulation cost $27.8 million to make, almost 3x more than they’re actually worth. 

The same is not true for every coin that the US Mint produces, of course, with dimes, quarters, and 50-cent pieces all costing less than face value to produce last year.

See the full article here.