Ditch the Penny? Here's My Two Cents Worth. (Better Make that Three.)

By Fred Bruning

Feb. 16, 2025

Now, it’s pennies.

Really?

I had just recovered from Super Bowl halftime and word that Google Maps was busily changing the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America when news arrived that pennies again are an endangered species.

This happens from time to time.

Periodically, one or another important person will decide that among the nation’s most pressing issues is the good old Lincoln Head, which, OK, costs more than three cents to produce and OK, again, makes no fiduciary sense, and, sadly, gets so little respect that people – young people, especially – will not go the enormous trouble of bending from the waist and rescuing an orphaned penny from the sidewalk.

Still, does everything have to make sense?

Since when?

Just turn on the news.

Anything seem logical?

Quick: Name it.

Please.

Cost effectiveness – the mighty bottom line – includes more than just the penny.

I don’t know, does the Washington Monument make money? The Post Office? Hey, why don’t we turn off the lights on the Statue of Liberty or maybe charge a toll to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge?

Anybody looking at my bank account (or in touch with Wink, my wife) knows I did not major in accounting or make a bundle at Goldman Sachs.

To me, money is a mystery, like Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber.

When I get cash at the ATM, I immediately give it to Wink.

“Here. I’ll lose it.”

“No question. Give it over.”

But the penny isn’t just money, right?

It’s a call to thrift, a reminder that less can be more, and that Abraham Lincoln was a great man, humble man, because why else would they put his face on our most nominal currency if humility was not once a national virtue, and rare?

Oh, boy. Yada, yada, yada. Sorry.

Anyway, this all has mostly to do with maybe 1949, walking down 69^th Street, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with Mom, Winnie, a woman who wasted nothing – soap ends, bacon fat, the aluminum foil liners inside my father’s Raleigh cigarettes – and spotting on the sidewalk a shiny penny in front of Mandel and Russo, the dentists.

“Pick it up, Freddie,” said Mom, looking around as though a neighbor might make a grab for the coin himself. “Quick.”

“Good luck, right, Mom?”

“We’ll put it in your bank when we get home.”

The bank was a black plastic Scottie dog with a scarf around its neck and slot in its head.

This would have been given the little boy – me – by his aunts Rena and Dellie, lovely, religious people, to encourage frugality and good stewardship of your earthly possessions as, they knew, Jesus would have wanted.

When there were enough coins in the Scottie dog, Mom and I would roll them on the kitchen table and make a deposit in my kiddie account at – yessir – The Lincoln Savings Bank on 75^th Street and Fifth Avenue.

Now I respect money so much I’m afraid to touch it. As needed, I ask Wink for enough to fill the tank or buy an oatmeal cookie. I keep a few dollars deep in my wallet to handle emergencies. Otherwise, I don’t tempt fate. Mom and, I’m sure, Jesus, expect me to guard wealth carefully, so I do.

In other words, after all this, the idea is that I have a powerful attachment to the penny, Mom and the stellar Abe Lincoln, too.

It is true that other countries have discontinued their penny equivalents – Australia, Brazil, Canada, New Zealand, for instance – and shopkeepers say they are a pain.

"We always round down," a pizza shop owner told Newsday. "We never even take the penny. So we would be OK with this idea."

I get it. But I’m not budging, not rounding down.

Besides experts say without pennies there would be a greater demand for nickels.

Production cost? Nearly 14 cents.

Sentimental fool, I hope we never stop making the penny, our most endearing American coin. If canceled, it will be missed, wait and see.

Have we thought this through?

Look what happened to the Gulf of Mexico.

Previous Invisible Ink posts at: https://fredbruning.substack.com/archive