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per cent of the nation’s pennies, says the Treasury, with another 10 per cent listed as lost.
But pennies are needed. Some 11 billion of them were minted in 1976, and we’ll need 12 to 15 billion by 1980, and 25 billion by 1990. When copper went to war in 1943, over a billion pennies were made of steel coated with zinc, producing dull grayish coins.
M.I.A. Pennies In 1973 the mint made 15 experimental pennies of aluminum and gave them to the Senate and House Banking Committees for inspection.
When the idea of aluminum pennies was turned down, these experimental coins were supposed to be returned. At last count, 11 are still missing—each with an estimated coin-collecting value of up to $30,000.
The Treasury became penny-wise a few years ago when a survey recommended not only the penny be scrapped, but that no more half-dollars be made and that the dollar coin be squeezed down to the size of a quarter.
Treasury Secretary W. Michael Blumenthal endorses the idea of a smaller dollar, and killing off the half dollar. But he wants to learn what penny-users think before possibly eliminating the penny.
Besides stretching the penny’s life by making it of cheaper alloys the Treasury is also considering replacing it with a 2 or 2‘/a-cent coin.
Public reaction so far has ranged from outrage to indifference to whimsy. Junking the penny would be “shameful” or “unpatriotic” say some. Or, it would produce the ultimate in idiomatic inflation: “A 2'/jcent piece saved is a 2‘/a-cent piece earned.”
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