There was a memo sent way back in March 2015 by US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew to President Obama that he planned to suspend production of the venerable penny. There was no further news on that since then. But now we learn that indeed the pennies, the one’s which we get for our thoughts, could soon out of production.

The logic is simple – such small denominations are simply no longer relevant and in that context, the cost of making these pennies is double the value of the penny.

The cost of making this penny – quarter costs $0.00895, that of a nickel is $0.0809, dime is $0.0391 and that of penny is $0.0166. Thus is makes more sense to stamp them out rather than waste resources and money. 97.5% of the metal used to make pennies is zinc.

The US is too late in doing this. So many countries around the world have already done away with these small valued coins - Sweden, Finland, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Israel, Brazil, Britain and Norway.

India stamped them out long before the others. Remember we earlier used to have 1 , 2, 3, 5, 10 and even 20 paise coins. Those are no longer made and have become something of vintage value. Our highest valued coin is 25 paise.

The denomination coins produced were 1/2 Re, 1/4 Re, 2 Anna, 1 Anna, 1/2 Anna & 1 Pice coins which are also referred as Anna series or pre-decimal coinage. One rupee was divided into 16 annas or 64 pice, with each anna therefore equal to 4 pice. To distinguish between the two pice, the coins minted between 1957 and 1964 have the legend "Naya Paisa". The word "naya" was dropped in 1964. In this year a new denomination the 3 paise was introduced and in 1968 a 20 paise coin was minted. Both these coins however did not gain much popularity. The 1, 2 and 3 paise coins were phased out gradually in the 1970s. Effective from 30 June 2011, all coins in denominations of 25 paise and below were officially demonetised.