It has been reported yet again that the penny is on its way out as U.S. coinage, the victim of inflation on several fronts.
The penny has been produced in various metal iterations through its history in this country, beginning with 100 percent copper in the late 1700s and returning to 95 percent copper and 5 percent zinc from 1962-1982. In between, nickel, bronze and steel were used at times.
Those copper-zinc ratios flipped to 97.5 percent zinc, 2.5 percent copper in October 1982 and continue to the present. The move away from copper was due to the rising cost of that metal.
But, in early 2024, the value of the zinc content of a penny is roughly 3 cents, making the coin again an economic outlier.
And the calls are heard to do away with the penny. Prices, say those suggesting the abolition of the penny, could be quoted in five-cent increments – $9.95 instead of $9.99. I’m thinking that might be $10 or $10.05 instead of $9.99 based on current and historic price trends. More on that later.
But that does not include the effect of such things as sales taxes, currently 6 percent in most of Pennsylvania, but 7 percent in select counties. Buying a $1 product (if you can find such a thing) in Pennsylvania leads to a $1.06 or $1.07 final price – pennies required.
I’m sure that can be rounded up, too, for the betterment of taxing bodies, to $1.10.
The penny will pass into the dustbin of history with little notice by the younger crowd. But it will evoke waves of nostalgia from the Baby Boomers like me.
Penny candy was a staple of my youth. For various reasons, the family often was poor. My maternal grandmother lived in a hovel on Sunday Street in the Walnut Grove section of Johnstown.
At that time, 16-ounce glass bottles required a two-cent deposit upon purchase, that would be refunded once empties were returned.
We enterprising kids searched high and low for bottles and carted them to nearby small stores like Pebley’s, Carpenter Brothers or Jordan’s for the refunds. A green glass quart 7-Up bottle was quite the score, bringing 5 cents!
Back then, a child’s ticket to the Dale Theater was 35 cents and they had a candy bar of questionable pedigree there that sold for 3 cents. If you wanted to splurge, a soda machine dispensed a cup of the stuff for 10 cents.
Back then a penny had some buying power. Penny candy was the prime example.
O’Shea’s Candies had a store along Solomon Street near my grandmother’s. We would hike there, pennies in hand, to buy some low-end treats.
We couldn’t afford – or chose not to – the higher priced chocolate candy offerings, instead limiting ourselves to the penny candy.
For that penny, one could get wax shaped like a soda bottle with liquid inside, small packs of candy cigarettes, various other hard and soft candy offerings, and a seemingly unending assortment of additional cheap selections.
The booty, once pointed out by us and selected by the woman behind the glass counter, was placed in small paper bags and handed to the kids to carry home.
Another popular item of the time was the penny loafer – slip-on shoes with a strap and slot on top of the instep into which younger types inserted pennies.
The lore on this varies. Either the pennies were for good luck, or a reference to an earlier time when two cents bought a call from a phone booth and so gave wearers the option of always having the price of a call handy.
Regardless, these days inflation means you’d need bigger shoe slots for quarters – or maybe those unpopular dollar coins. Good luck finding a pay phone.
Soon, it seems, the penny will join unbiased media, limited genders, quality public education and honest elections as mere memories of a better past. Pause a moment to salute the passing of all those things we used to take for granted.
Sam Ross Jr's site 