(Radio Iowa) – Penny for your thoughts? The U-S Treasury stopped making pennies this week, and Iowa collectors are puzzling over what to do with their bags of one-cent pieces, as some Iowa banks and businesses have already stopped using them. Owen McKee, who owns McKee Coin in Ottumwa, says it really doesn’t make much “sense” to be hanging onto the copper-colored coins. “A lot of people are hoarding the pre-1982 because they’re copper,” McKee says. “The later ones, they’ve made millions and millions of them, so my guess is they will still use what they have until they’re no longer in use, or been hoarded, and then they will round up the prices on all the other sales that they make.” In fact, some estimates say there are 250- to 300-billion pennies still in circulation nationwide, so it may be several years before they vanish from our pockets and purses.

For now, pennies are still legal tender and they’re worth one-one-hundred of a dollar. “I doubt if they devalue them, but if they do devalue them, it means that they would be just sold for scrap metal,” McKee says. “I’ve seen bus tokens used in different towns for transportation and when they devalued the bus token, they just sold them for scrap metal.” The Trump administration ordered the Treasury to stop making pennies, as it costs nearly four cents to mint a single penny, which of course, is only worth one cent. Even though they’re no longer in production, McKee says pennies are so plentiful that they’re not a coin he’d consider acquiring from a collector. “Oh, Lincoln cents are something I’m not really buying,” McKee says. “I don’t see any reason to hoard them unless they’re rarer dates. Pre-1959, they’re called ‘wheat cents’ and they do have a value of about four cents a piece.”

While coins are his business, McKee says he shed no tears upon learning of the penny’s demise. “Maybe somebody might want these for nostalgia purposes later,” he says, “but currently they’re not bringing anything more than a penny.” The last penny was minted Wednesday in Philadelphia after more than 230 years in production. The U-S Mint reportedly lost more than 85-million dollars making pennies last year.