Only in America do pennies cost more to make than they are worth!
Al Ritter
According to The United States Mint’s 2009 Annual Report , the coins we use as currency are costing us more to make than they are worth! Because of the rise in cost of various metals pennies now cost us 1.6 cents apiece to make, and a reported 9 cents to mint a nickel.
All these additional costs pile up, in 2009 it cost us $32.2 million to mint 3.2 billion pennies, losing $19.8 million in the process. They minted 207 million nickels at a loss of $2.2 million dollars. Because of the physical size of dimes the mint made $15 million on them. Quarters were similar, raking in $132 million, and a huge profit of $318.7 million on dollar coins.
The commemorative coin sets serve to offset some of the current losses on circulated coins, but a break even point could be turned into a profit if the alloys are more closely monitored in the future. The most likely alloy to be used would probably be aluminum.
While the markets in metals rise and fall, the recipe or alloys can be changed, but require an Act of Congress to do so. There is some behind the scenes scrambling by the Obama Administration to have those alloys changed as we speak.
