Are Too Many Cents Nonsense?

The other day, while making the case that we don’t need to be minting any more cents, I decided to do a bit of research and discover exactly how over-supplied the humble Lincoln Cent really is. I think the results will amaze you.

We’ll begin with some simple numbers.

Lincoln Cents fall into five major categories.

1. Wheat Cents: 1909-1958
2. Lincoln Memorial Cents (copper): 1959-1982
3. Lincoln Memorial Cents (zinc): 1982-2008
4. Bicentennial Reverses: 2009
5. Shield Reverse: 2010-date

Now approximate total mintage figures (excluding Proofs) for each of the categories are as follows:

1. 25,804,000,000
2. 158,240,000,000
3. 269,404,000,000
4. 2,354,000,000
5. 49,025,000,000

That’s a total of 504,827,000,000, or just over half a TRILLION of these little suckers made. If we exclude the older copper cents, that gives us 321 billion zinc cents out there. That is enough to give every man, woman and child in the country 1,000 cents for their daily use. I think that should be plenty. In fact, 5% of that amount would likely suffice.

Half a trillion of anything is a lot, but to put that into perspective, if we lined all the cents up ever made, end to end, we’d have a line that would stretch for 5.96 million miles – enough to circle the earth at the equator 240 times!

How about putting them into rolls, and lining up the rolls? Well let’s just say that you could take off in a rocket and go to the moon, looking at lined up cent rolls the entire way. Then you could return, and again see rolls the entire way – and not the same ones you saw on the first trip! Yes, rolled Lincoln Cents would stretch for 476,800 miles!

Now, let’s try putting them all on a scale. In order to balance the scale, we would need to put something really heavy on the other side. What might that be? How about the Titanic in 1912, ready for its maiden voyage? Well, that wouldn’t even be close. How about 10 of them? Still not close. We would need 32 Titanics on the other side of the scale to bring it into balance. Four Empire State Buildings would also do the trick.

And if you’re planning to buy all the Lincoln Cents and put them in a storage unit, be prepared to look for one with a capacity of over 10 million cubic feet! And bring some helpers, because each cubic foot contains 50,000 cents and weighs 308 pounds!

I shall close this little treatise with a question: Why are we still making more?