Collectors hunting for valuable coins don't have to reach back a century or more to find them -- they can pop back a few ...

There are around 240 billion pennies in circulation in the U.S. currently, so the chances of any given penny being one of these valuable coins is around 1 in 8.8 billion.

But one penny has been hard to come by: the 2025 penny. “Everybody found out that the production is stopped, so everybody ran into the banks and started buying them,” Raines said.

But the U.S. won’t be the first country to discontinue the penny. New Zealand stopped producing its one-cent coins in 1990, followed by Australia in 1992 and Canada in 2012.

In fiscal year 2024, it took 3.7 cents to produce and distribute one penny, according to the 2024 U.S. Mint report. The 2024 cost was up by 20% from the previous year, according to the report.

Coinstar converts $3 billion in coins into spendable cash every year, one coin jar at a time. The average jar yields $58 in buying power. Most of us don’t realize how much our coins are worth.

The average cost to make one penny rose to 3.69 cents in the last fiscal year, marking the 19th consecutive year the coin has “remained above face value,” per the latest U.S. Mint report.

But one penny has been hard to come by: the 2025 penny. “Everybody found out that the production is stopped, so everybody ran into the banks and started buying them,” Raines said.

But one penny has been hard to come by: the 2025 penny. “Everybody found out that the production is stopped, so everybody ran into the banks and started buying them,” Raines said.