Penny History

My peers, currency is one of the cornerstones of modern society, but I ask why has the penny remained for hundreds of years while several other coins the United States has minted disappeared? Why must we continue to produce coins which are worth less than nothing? Why did the penny not die out in 2006? Why do we make coins that simply aren’t worth someone’s time and money? The penny wasn’t always the smallest unit of currency that the United States used, there existed a coin known as the half-cent which as it suggests was worth half of a penny. The half-cent was discontinued for being worth too little which in the present day can be connected to the penny, which is worth less than far too little. In fact, in an ideal world the penny would have disappeared completely in 2006 where …show more content…
Most of these countries instituted a rounding system to the nearest 5 cents or their equivalent after removing their smallest denomination of currency and none of them saw a decrease in donations to charitable foundations after they chose to stop producing worthless coins. The story of the penny begins as a blank-slate zinc core to be sent to a minting factory to have Lincoln’s face plastered onto it. Afterwards, the newly made pennies are sent to banks to be exchanged to the hands of a store. Later a consumer enters the store and purchases enough goods to make the change from the transaction result in the consumer receiving pennies. Those pennies eventually are discovered to be unable to be spent anywhere, machines won’t take the penny and spending them at a store is simply a waste of time, so the pennies end up hiding in a jar alive to the economy yet dead to the