TORONTO — A newspaper cost three cents when Carl Anderson started collecting pennies 70 years ago.
As a boy, he sold The Toronto Star.
“You used to get a lot of pennies, so I started to save them and that started my coin collecting,” said Anderson, 81. “A lot of kids collected coins and they always started with pennies, because that’s what they could afford.”
A penny went a long way in those days. A grab bag of candy cost a cent; admission to a movie cost six cents. For a dime, a boy could keep himself in sweets for a week — and catch a Saturday matinee.
But that’s all changed. Most wouldn’t stop on the street to pick up a penny anymore. It’s hardly worth the effort of bending down.
“Nobody cares about them anymore,” said Anderson. “The penny is virtually worthless.”
The Government of Canada agrees. And so, after 155 years, the penny is going to die out.
Today, the Royal Canadian Mint stops distributing the penny in Canada’s first-ever phase-out of a circulation coin.
And the omnipresent, pocket-jangling copper coins will join the ranks of Australia’s one- and two-cent pieces, Britain’s halfpenny, Israel’s one-agora piece, as coins no longer of use.
Over time, pennies will make their way from people’s pockets to banks, which will return them to the Mint. They will be melted down. The costly metals of which they’re made, zinc and copper, will get recycled.
And eventually, the penny will be no more.
Pennies will retain their value, even as businesses begin rounding cash transactions to the nearest 5-cent mark as early today. That rounding will only happen with cash; the cent remains the smallest unit of Canadian money for accounting and many other purposes.
The penny has reached the point where it’s not worth the metal it’s made of. It costs 1.6 cents to make a penny, which adds up to an $11 million annual tab on the government. Reports suggest just handling pennies cost business some $150 million a year.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced the end of the penny last March as part of federal budget cuts.
Canada has used a penny since 1858, though it was 1876 before the newly formed country had its own coins, minted in Britain.
In 1908, the Ottawa branch of the British Royal Mint opened. Governor General Lord Earl Grey tapped the press to mint a 50-cent piece. A few moments later, the Countess of Grey struck the first Canadian-made penny.
Since then, some 35 billion pennies have been made in Canada. Stacked side-by-side, all Canada’s pennies would circle the Earth more than 16 times.
Collectors, meanwhile, determine the worth of a coin based on its rarity more than its vintage. For example, the 1936 “Dot Penny,” of which three are known to exist, sold in 2010 for more than $400,000.
But most pennies will remain virtually worthless — and plentiful — for many years to come, collectors say.