Not only does the US government continue to produce and circulate the penny which costs way more than a penny to mint, they mint multiple reverse designs to encourage people to collect them.
I get it. It's a fun, healthy and educational thing for kids to collect coins. But nowadays a quarter is not beyond the realm of cost for most kids to collect and the commemorative designs are popular with younger collectors. And there's a bonus: US government profit! The 50 state commemorative quarter program produced over 6 billion in seigniorage.
A dime today probably has less value than a penny when I was a kid, and as a kid I was able to afford to be a penny coin collector. Many of my friends did too. And we weren't from rich families. In grade school, I walked with high school kids and scoured the sides of the roads on their routes home to get their soda bottles when they were done so I could collect the 2c deposits back from the store. I learned fast what kids bought sodas after school every day. And a penny had value when I was little. You could buy a full-size candy bar (substantially shorter and wider but similar in volume and weight to today's bars) for 5c and the corner store across the street even had a big selection of penny candy.
Why not an aggressive program to create commemorative and collectible designs on the dime? Unlike the penny or nickel, the dime is a coin that produces a profit when someone takes it out of circulation. What moron denizens of the government "swamp" decided encouraging people to collect a money losing penny is better than a money making dime??????
Like TN alluded to above, in the future it won't matter. A cashless society is getting closer by the year.
I always throw in and take out from the omnipresent give a penny, take a penny trays. But I had an experience that showed me there's still at least one person who values that penny way too much.
My truth is stranger than fiction personal penny story: I remember a couple years ago buying a convenience store soda for a dollar and change and after tax I was one penny shy. I asked the clerk if he had a penny and he said no! I laughed in disbelief and told him truthfully that the next smallest bill I had was a ten. He told me he wasn't paying for my soda. I just kept laughing as I reminded him that he was going to have to make the effort to give me bills and 99c change over a penny. He said he didn't care it wasn't his job to pay for me. I just kept chuckling as he counted out my change asking him if he had ever heard of the saying penny-wise dollar foolish. That's when the story gets really good! One of the quarters was brown and obviously a dug coin. I've never refused a dug coin but on this day I just couldn't resist. I bs'd him that the quarter was damaged and not legal tender. He argues with me that it is a quarter. I said that if I took it to the bank like that they wouldn't accept it and I wanted a legal quarter. So this guy who can't stand much more than 5 feet or way much less than 400 pounds just stands there glaring at me. I'm serious I said to him with as stern a face as I could muster. You're bitching about me trying to beat you out of a penny and you're trying to knowingly give me an illegal quarter. I could have you arrested! At that point this genius gets a funny look on his face and looks at the dug quarter in a way that appeared to me as if he's seriously considering my threat. He gives me a new quarter and takes back the dug one.