The US continues to mint pennies (1-cent coins) for a number of reasons. Among others:
(1) Unlike many countries that levy sales taxes at the national level, the US has a crazy-quilt of state, regional, and local sales taxes that affect prices differently depending on where an item is purchased. While rounding up or down would probably even out in the long run, many people are concerned that rounding on individual purchases would cause some parties to benefit while others would be (pun intended) short-changed. As a result many people prefer to keep prices exact to the penny. Note though that with more and more payments being made electronically using coins for exact change is becoming less important. Also many stores that still deal with cash now have "penny trays" where people can add or take a couple of the coins if they wish while otherwise rounding their payment.
(2) Tradition. The cent was the first coin struck by the new country in 1793 and the denomination has been minted nearly every year since then. The obverse of the current 1-cent coin has been the same since 1909 and people view it as a symbol of both familiarity and stability.
(3) Resistance to change. Moreso than people in many other countries, Americans have tended to push back against anything that requires modifying long-standing habits even if those practices have become outdated. For example there has been significant resistance to adopting new, more-efficient light bulbs even though they'd save consumers huge amounts of money, and two attempts to switch from the old foot-pound-ounce measurement system to SI units have failed despite the facts that the US is the only non-metric country and conversion would save tens of billions of dollars every year.
(4) Lobbying by the zinc industry. The US Mint produces roughly 6 to 7 billion cents every year. Each coin contains 2.44 gm of zinc which means the Mint consumes about 16,000 tonnes of that metal annually, or about 5% of all zinc smelted in the US. While 5% may seem insignificant that still amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars so the industry is more than willing to lobby Congress to continue cent production. It's similar to the way the company that produces paper for $1 bills lobbies against using $1 coins in order to protect its interests.
yes I have 1 1943 copper pennies, but if you find one make sure it is not a 1948 with the 8 cut down and yes its a copper pennies
Out of the 186,775,000 that were struck nobody knows how many are still in circulation.
The price of the copper used to make a penny cost more than a penny.
The US never made silver pennies. In 1943 the US made steel pennies. These are often mistaken for silver pennies.
The U.S. still mints pennies, but Canada discontinued them in 2012.
they still make pennies
Yes.
In 2011, the U.S. Mint produced 4,938,540,000 pennies.
yes
yes I have 1 1943 copper pennies, but if you find one make sure it is not a 1948 with the 8 cut down and yes its a copper pennies
Out of the 186,775,000 that were struck nobody knows how many are still in circulation.
Zinc and Copper.
Out of the 186,775,000 that were struck nobody knows how many are still in circulation.
100 pennies make $1.00 200 pennies make $2.00 and so on.
The cost of minting them. Today's pennies are zinc (cheap) coated with a copper wash, and still cost more to make than they are worth.
100 pennys=$1.00 do the math.
3 trillion pennies make 3 trillion pennies. 300 trillion pennies make 3 trillion dollars.