During every mention of new versus old pennies, the cost of coin production comes up. Invariably, I say something vague about the cos of production of a penny having risen over the years until the production cost out-stripped the value of a penny - meaning that the government was losing money on every penny it produced.
I've never actually done the research on those details, however. I just keep telling students that they can look it up. I don't think any of my students ever took me up on that offer, though, because none of them came back with evidence asking for extra credit - as I'm sure they would.
Thankfully The Washington Post recently published an article on our government continuing to lose money every time it mints a penny - or a nickel, even.
I did not know that the production cost of a nickel was higher than the five cents for which the government can then 'sell' the nickel.
Just in case The Post chooses to put the article behind a paywall or into an archive at some point, I've grabbed it into Word then published it via Scribd.
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