The U.S. Mint stopped making pennies in 2025, and Congress has since voted to make that official. If you shop at dollar stores, and especially if you hunt one-cent items, you might be wondering what this means at the register. Here’s the plain version.
What happened to the penny
The U.S. Mint stopped producing pennies in 2025, after the cost of making one rose to almost 4 cents. The last penny for general circulation was minted on November 12, 2025. In 2026, Congress gave final approval to the Common Cents Act, which formally ends penny production for general circulation.
Pennies still count as money
Existing pennies aren’t canceled. They remain legal tender, so you can keep spending the ones in your jar.
Cash totals may be rounded
As pennies get harder to find, the law allows businesses to round cash purchases to the nearest nickel. Even before the vote, some stores ran short on coins. Some asked customers to pay with exact change, and others rounded cash totals in the customer’s favor. How rounding works depends on the store.
Cards still charge the exact cent
If you pay with a credit card, debit card or another non-cash method, you can still be charged the exact amount, down to the cent.
What this means for penny items
Penny items still ring up at $0.01 in the store’s system. Nothing about the coin changes that. What can change is the final total if you pay cash. A one-cent purchase paid in cash could be affected by a store’s rounding rules.
A few simple ways to avoid any awkwardness:
- Pay by card if you want the exact total.
- Keep a few pennies with you if you prefer cash and want to pay exactly.
- Combine penny items with regular shopping, so the total isn’t a single cent.
Does this make penny shopping pointless?
Not at all. The value of a penny item is the item itself, a $5 or $10 product for almost nothing. Whether your total is rounded by a few cents hardly matters.
Ready to go hunting?
Start with how penny items work at Dollar Tree and the weekly Dollar General penny list.