For a coin that never officially entered circulation, the 1974 aluminum penny has sparked decades of debate, secrecy, and even courtroom drama.
Some time ago, I wrote a post about the 1982 US coin change that saw the penny move from copper to copper plated zinc. This was a move that saved the US government a lot of money. But did you know that the problems with the cost of copper didn't start in 1982? These problems were already showing up in the 1970s.
In the early 1970s, the price of copper began climbing — so much so that by 1973, the melt value of a penny was nearing one cent. That posed an obvious problem for the U.S. Mint: if it cost more than a penny to make a penny, the government was literally losing money with every coin struck.
To solve the problem, the Mint experimented with alternative metals. One promising candidate was aluminum — lightweight, corrosion-resistant, and much cheaper than copper. In 1974, the Mint struck more than 1.5 million aluminum cents as a test run, intending to release them into circulation the following year.
But then things got political, as they so often do.
Pediatricians raised concerns that aluminum pennies would not show up clearly on X-rays if swallowed by a child. Japan has had aluminum 1 yen coins for a long time — they are smaller than the US penny and I've never heard of kids swallowing them. But there you go. In addition, vending machine companies complained that the coins would mess up their calibration systems. And some members of Congress — who had been gifted samples by the Mint — began to worry about legality and optics. That may have been cover for the true motive of Congress, which was bribes — I mean, "lobbying" from the copper industry.
By the end of the year, the project was quietly shelved, and the Mint began recalling and destroying the coins.Most were accounted for. But not all.
A few aluminum cents escaped destruction. One made it into the hands of a former U.S. Capitol police officer, who later tried to sell it. That resulted in a high-profile legal battle in 2016, with the government arguing that the coin was never legal tender and had to be returned. Another surfaced in the collection of a former Mint director, sparking similar controversy.
As of today, aluminum pennies remain illegal to own — and yet, rumors persist that a handful still exist in private collections, tucked away from prying eyes. If you happen to find one, you might be holding a piece of forbidden history worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — assuming the government doesn’t seize it first.
Is that likely? Probably not, but never rule anything out. The steel pennies of WWII are not exactly uncommon, so it's not out of the realm of possibilities that someone ends up with an aluminum penny, doesn't check the date and just assumes it is a steel penny, and spends it. Stranger things have happened.
Lesson: Always check dates, especially if the penny isn't copper colored.