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“If only I had a nickel” could take on a brand-new, more wistful meaning.
The death of the penny — which President Donald Trump ordered late last year after the coin began to cost approximately four times more to make than it’s actually worth in US currency — has some wondering if the nickel, which has been in circulation since 1866, could soon get the same fiscal farewell.
While penny preservationists once cautioned that eradicating the 1-cent coin had the potential to cause monetary mayhem, the only real-time consequence to date has been scattered penny shortages, according to USA Today.
Now, some are wondering if the nickel could be next on the chopping block of change — being that they are even “bigger losers” in terms of production cost-to-worth ratio.
“The argument for getting rid of the nickel is that it costs more to produce — quite a bit more, actually — than its face value,” David Smith, a Pepperdine University economist, told USA Today.
In 2024, each nickel made cost the United States Mint 13.78 cents, a loss of nearly 9 cents a coin. Added up, that equaled a $85 million loss.
Meanwhile, each penny made in 2024 cost the US government 3.69 cents to make that year, adding up to an $18 million loss.
Factored into this cost is the substance that nickels are actually made of — 25% actual nickel and 75% copper. They are also larger than their penny counterparts, of which the majority were made of zinc.
While ditching the penny was a “no-brainer,” Robert Whaples, an economist at Wake Forest University who had long argued for the coin’s demise, told USA Today that he doesn’t “see any groundswell for getting rid of the nickel” as Americans are more likely to use the 5-cent coin when completing purchases.
That said, the Treasury pressed a meager 113 million nickels in 2024, while they minted 3.2 billion pennies.
While inflation and the slogging demise of purchasing power in the nickel are cause to keep watch, Pepperdine’s Smith said that “it’ll still be quite some time before we eliminate the nickel,” adding that it would likely take 10 to 15 years to eradicate the coin.
“My sense is, at some point, it’s inevitable,” Smith told USA Today. “But not necessarily any time soon.”
