Belton coin shop owner gives advice on what to do with spare change after penny is discontinued
BELTON, Texas (KWTX) - The one cent penny will no longer be made, but that doesn’t mean the spare change is obsolete and it won’t become rare either.
The U.S. ended production of the penny Wednesday, abandoning the 1-cent coins that were embedded in American culture for more than 230 years but became nearly worthless.
Troy Emilson, the owner of Emilson’s Coin Shop located at 201 E. Central Ave., says the news didn’t surprise him.
“They’ve been talking about it for years now so I knew at one time it was going to come to an end,” he says.
That time is now because the coin costs four times its worth to make.
“They stopped putting copper in pennies in ‘81 so from ‘82 on it’s just a small sheath of copper and zinc is what is primarily in those coins,” he explains.
Emilson says he has gotten several questions from customers about what this means.
“I’ve had people calling me on the phone and I’ve had people coming in asking about the penny and thinking the penny is going to be worth quite a bit,” he says.
However, that’s not the case. “They’re not going to be rare or valuable, you’re just holding the stores hostage from being able to offer change to their customers.”
People have mentioned stores rounding up or down on change back because they don’t have pennies causing either the business or the buyer to lose more than anticipated.
“Everybody that is hoarding those pennies, please take them to the bank so businesses can have them,” he says.
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