According to the US Mint site , the penny currently costs 2.41 cents to produce, and 7,070,000,000 pennies were produced in 2013. Doing the math, and accounting that we lose 1.41 cents for every penny, that is $99,687,000 in 2013 that we lost just for the penny. If the Nickel is considered, we will add even more to that number. The nickel costs 11.18 cents to produce, so we are losing 6.18 cents for every nickel, with 1,223,040,000 nickels produced, that is a loss of $75,583,872. Combining the two gives us $175,270,872 being wasted on production of these coins. This is to produce coins whose total value comes to $68,222,000.
Data gathered from www.usmint.gov
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