ROCHESTER, Minn. (KTTC) – As the United States mints its last penny, ending a more than 200-year streak, visitors in Rochester’s peace plaza reacted to the final coin bearing Lincoln’s visage.
“I think the biggest thing that’s going to happen is any place that has something for seven, eight, nine, six cents, it’s gonna go up. It’s not gonna go down,” John Nemmers, a visitor to Rochester, said.
Nemmers is not the only one who feels that way. San Diego resident Tresha Souza agrees.
“It’s just another opportunity for the government to charge us more money under the guise of it’s too expensive for them,” Souza said.
According to President Trump, when announcing the change back in February, each penny costs nearly four cents to make. With the change, the Treasury Department hopes to save $56 million per year in material costs.
However, dropping the penny could cost the Treasury more as well, as it will create a greater need for nickels, which are two and a half times less cost effective to mint than pennies.
“It’s sad,” Souza said. “It’s a whole other move to change things that always were.”
“It’ll be something I suppose that’ll be missed,” Nemmers added. “A lot of people collect pennies. My son’s a collector. He found the old wheat pennies. Actually, my wife and I have a dog, we call it our vacation dog, and then we throw change in there. And most of it is pennies. We’ll spend them eventually, but until then we’ll be collectors of pennies.”
As the world becomes more digitized, so too does the currency the world runs on. Physical pennies have become less and less commonly used as credit and debit cards, and cashless payment takes hold.
Many people, such as Sandra Jordan, typically keep pennies in a special place, socked away.
“I’ve got this whole bag that I keep them in,” Jordan said. “And if they get to be a good amount, then I don’t mind giving them to someone, but then they hate me, because they have to count them out for people.”
While it may be a nuisance for some and a collectible for others, it’s hard to deny it’s a tradition coming to a close.
“[I’ll] kind of miss Lincoln’s head, Jordan said. ”And [I’ll] probably forget about the penny.”
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