My Two Cents: The Dime Should Be the New Penny

Pennies and nickels cost more to mint than they’re worth. Source: US Mint data

The Costly Reality

Based on this article, pennies and nickels BOTH cost more to mint than their face value. In 2024 alone, we burned roughly $168+ million just to keep pennies and nickels alive. Here’s the table of coin/profit based on that article:

Coin	Face Value	Cost to Mint	Loss / Profit per Coin
Penny	$0.01	~$0.04	–$0.017 (1.7¢ loss)
Nickel	$0.05	~$0.138	–$0.088 (8.8¢ loss)
Dime	$0.10	~$0.052	+$0.048 (4.8¢ profit)
Quarter	$0.25	~$0.123	+$0.127 (12.7¢ profit)
Half Dollar	$0.50	~$0.34	+$0.16 (16¢ profit)
Dollar Coin	$1.00	~$0.1243	+$0.8757 (87.57¢ profit)

So... wisely, the US stopped minting pennies early this year (2026). But—unwisely—they're still minting nickels, which actually lose more per coin than pennies ever did. If we’re serious about cutting waste, the fix isn’t complicated.

Make the dime the new penny

Here’s the obvious fix: stop minting both pennies and nickels, and make the dime the smallest unit of pricing. No more $9.99 vs. $10.01 games—everything stops at the dime. $9.99 becomes $10.0, $4.37 becomes $4.4, $2.01 becomes $2.0, and so on. Existing pennies and nickels would still be valid currency, but pricing would no longer use them. Over time, the sub‑dime coins could simply be collected and retired. Countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand already eliminated their lowest‑value coins without consumer chaos, proving this isn’t some radical idea.

This avoids consumer complaints about “rounding abuse” and business complaints about “forced rounding losses.” In practice, nothing meaningful changes for shoppers—if anything, prices get easier to read and change gets easier to count.

The missed opportunity

And the US would be much better off in the Treasury Department. Based on Tennessee Star US Mint data:

• Penny data (2025 Treasury summary)
  – Cost per penny: 3.69¢
  – 2024 production: 5.6 billion pennies
  – Total loss: $68 million
• Nickel data (same report)
  – Cost per nickel: 13.78¢
  – 2024 production: 1.2 billion nickels
  – Total loss: over $100 million

A simple bipartisan win

What a waste—and what an easy opportunity to cut it. If Congress wants a boring, bipartisan win, this is sitting right there on the table.

Call your senator and make this the next hot item in Congress!

(Rounding only becomes a real issue when the rules vary. A federal dime‑based pricing standard would apply everywhere, keeping prices simple and consistent.)