PENNY WISE, NICKEL FOOLISH, AND THAT’S NOT THE HALF PENCE OF IT

The Answer to Life is in These Words

When established in 1792, one of the first coins made by the U.S. Mint was the penny which bore, as its head, the shinning likeness of Lady Liberty with long, flowing hair. And right now, the Treasury Department is winding down the production of pennies, as a cost-saving measure, after, in May 2025, ordering the last batch to be printed. The 1-cent coin is getting the ax because pennies have long been more expensive to manufacture than they’re worth —“skyrocketing” to about 4 cents.

Specifically, pennies are made up of 97.5 percent zinc and 2.3 percent plating, and cost precisely $3.69 each to make. Ceasing production will ultimately save taxpayers $56 million annually in reduced material costs.

The U.S. Treasury Department tells us there are still about 114 billion pennies in circulation not to mention the untold number “buried in sofa cushions or rattling around under car floor mats.”

So, soon businesses dealing in cash will be rounding prices to the nearest nickel. While we’re on that subject, it’s imperative to point out the five-cent-piece ain’t no prize either.

In the 2024 fiscal year, the U.S. mint reported an uptick of 19.4 percent of nickels made from the year before. And the truth is, nickels are a big money loser, too, costing nearly 14 cents ($13.78) a piece to produce. Action has been long overdue. For the past 19 years, the cost of minting both nickels and pennies has outpaced the coins’ street value.

I’m unsure if the penny was “worth my thoughts,” but, if you’ll hang with me, I have more to share with you.

DID YOU EVER notice that Time magazine is everywhere: on newsstand racks, in the barbershop, on a seat near the Broadway bus’s back door -- whereas you see Newsweek nowhere these days. Why is that? Well, I’m not surprised. Once revered Newsweek is now Bad Karma, Bad Business, Bad Blood, Bad News.

I’ll tell you why. In early 2000s I began a piece on my beloved coin—the penny. The result was 19 pages of commentary, opinion, research, and several direct quotes from friends and colleagues on the controversial one cent piece. By that time, I had some solid writing credits and felt confident enough to submit my efforts to the editors at a magazine I was fond of: Newsweek. Alas, the editors readily turned down my blood, sweat, tears, and tireless effort without so much as a word of encouragement.

I continued to work on the manuscript all through the 2000s eliciting additional feedback from friends, family, an occasionally stranger in line at the bank or supermarket as well as some colleagues at ABC Television.

In early 2008, I submitted my rewrite on what I now called the humble coin to Newsweek. Lo, behold, stop the presses, hold the phone, the then-popular weekly accepted my fresh findings on the penny.

Newsweek sent a photographer to my apartment to take my picture, edited the pages down to one, gave me a bold by-line, and then ran my picture with my effort on their well-respected “My Turn Column,” April 27, 2008 – a full page in color.

Obviously, I’m fond of pennies for reasons I included in the piece and was pleased with Newsweek’s editing down to one page with a fresh slant: my mother – not what I’d originally imagined but I like it even more.

I made hundreds of color photocopies on heavy stock and passed the reprint on to every friend, acquaintance and cousin who would accept a copy.

Which brings us to today. Since, for some unknown… unexplained reason – not one of my half a dozen plus phone calls and letters to the current editor¹ of Newsweek – “they” took not only my name off the piece and also removed my photograph. Yet, the article is still in their database without my credits.

So, here in my July SUBSTACK, as “Jim Fragale’s Newsletter,” Free btw, I’m running the original. These days, a copy hangs in the center of my living room. A super, nameless friend had it mounted in a strong black frame as an anniversary gift. I’m grateful to see it each time I walk through my living room. (He goes ballistic when his John Hancock appears in print in offbeat places, so I’ll resist naming him.)

Here's the original Newsweek one-paged, by-lined “My Turn” column that ran on April 7, 2008 before a sourpuss removed my photography and by-line.

HALF PENCE EXPLAINED: During my early days in New York, I saw the hit Broadway show, Half a Sixpence, starring Harrisburg/Pittsburgh’s Grover Dale, as character “Pearce,” who sang the song HALF A SIXPENCE… “Half a Sixpence is better than half a penny, which is better than half a farthing…”. I later learned Dale had been actor Anthony Perkins’ (Psycho) roommate for a long time. Some years later, I had dinner with Grover Dale at Joe Allen’s restaurant. And I was to meet Anthony Perkins at a cocktail party in New York, back in the day when folks still had dinner parties. Cheers.

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1. Editor-in-Chief is Jennifer H. Cunningham, at NEWSWEEK, 7 Hanover Square – 5th Floor, New York, NY 10004, (646) 867-7100. Cunningham was not there when the penny “My Turn” column ran. I vaguely recall a different woman editor who took a disliking to me whose name started with a “C” as well