Nickel and Dimed

In a recent New Yorker piece, David Owen resurrected the issue of why the United States persists in minting and using pennies. It's common knowledge that it costs the U.S. Mint more to make a penny (1.7 cents) than it's worth. But one problem with eliminating the annoying low-denomination coins would boost our reliance on nickels -- and those cost almost 10 cents to manufacture.

A couple of other factoids from Owen's piece:

• "The U.S. Mint took more than two years to manufacture its first million coins; the Philadelphia Mint now makes that many every forty-five minutes or so."
• "One of the biggest challenges of coin design is portraying realistic-looking three-dimensional facial features on a metal surface that is nearly flat. This difficulty explains why the faces on coins are almost always shown in profile: doing so keeps noses recognizable. The 2006 nickel, which features a likeness of Jefferson ... is the first circulating U.S. coin to have a forward-facing portrait; it is considered by coin aficionados to be an engraving tour de force."