Local coin shops are preparing for the end of an era as pennies will no longer be produced.
The Treasury Department ordered its last batch of blanks this month used to print the coins.
Once that supply is gone, no new pennies will be produced.
The issue comes down to cost versus benefit.
It costs the Treasury four cents to make the one cent coin.
Kenneth Gaipa, owner of Kenneth G. Rare Coins says he expects some people will start to see the penny as a low level investment.
"You're going to have a lot of people hoarding, thinking they're going to go up in value. And I think you're going to start getting more people in collecting for them too. They're going to start collecting the more of the pennies now, because of that," Gaipa said.
Gaipa says he doesn't expect newer pennies to go up in value any time soon since there are literally billions of newer pennies in circulation.
He says the older pennies are the ones you should look to collect if that's your desire.
"We mainly look for the older ones. They call them the wheat pennies. That's 1958 and older is the wheat pennies. And that's the ones that are a little bit more collectible. Yeah, the newer ones. And then they changed from in 1982 they switched over from copper to zinc, so that from 82 till now there there's no copper in them," Gaipa said.
Alan Nunemaker, owner of Nunemaker's Coin Shop, says he expects the biggest impact to be seen at the cash register when you're paying for something or getting change back purchased with cash.
"The thought is that they're going to round up, if there's, you know, round up the whole nickel by cents, and so they'll have the bearing on that will be physical, you know, if you're in a grocery store or something like that, where they're going to make change. that's where you're going to see the biggest impact," Nunemaker said.
With so many pennies still in circulation, that's not likely to be a concern for years if not decades.
Both say that they were surprised the Treasury Department didn't also announce the end of nickel production as well.
It costs almost 14 cents to make a single nickel.
They both believe over time the nickel will reach the same fate as the penny.