The U.S. Mint is no longer making the least-valuable American coin, and Vermont’s financial institutions are already feeling the pinch.
“Pennies will be distributed very sparingly, and unfortunately, we cannot guarantee exact amounts that will be available for your requests,” Vermont Federal Credit Union told its customers in an email earlier this month.
The decision came down to dollars and cents: Minting a single penny cost roughly 3.7 cents. The good news: That should save the country about $56 million a year. The bad: Monetary transactions are still calculated down to every last penny, and the coins in circulation are getting scarcer.
Northfield Savings Bank has about $6,000 in pennies on hand, according to president and CEO Joseph Bator. That might sound like a lot, but, for the largest bank headquartered in Vermont, it’s not, he said on Monday. The bank needs coins not only for customers conducting business in person but also for its retail clients who request the coins in bulk for cash transactions with their own customers.
Northfield can ensure its customers get every penny they’re due, Bator said. If somebody cashes a check that includes two cents, for instance, they can deposit it, withdraw the dollars and leave $0.02 in the account.
The biggest complaints, Bator said, have been from coin collectors who used to request rolls of pennies — say, $50 worth — and take them apart looking for prized coins: steel pennies produced during World War II, old wheat pennies and certain rare — and therefore, valuable — one-cent pieces.
Some retailers, meanwhile, have begun rounding transactions to the nearest nickel. Public information campaigns could be needed, Bator said. Without that, consumers could feel that somebody is taking something from them. In reality, rounding up or down will, over time, work out just like a toss of the coin.
“I’m a math guy,” he said. “I know it will round out at the end.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “They Stopped Making Cents”
This article appears in January 21 • 2026.
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