An old story

Back in the early 1970’s the US Mint suggested making pennies of aluminum. They minted 100 special aluminum pennies for the US Senate. Afterwards they asked for the pennies back. Twelve were missing. The FBI was called in.

I never heard the end to that story. How long did the FBI
hunt for 12 cents? Did they find any of the missing pennies?

In 1974 the mint made 1.5 million aluminum cents as examples to show to congressmen and the like. Basically, they were an attempt to make a cheaper cent (anal note: the United States does not have “pennies”, we have cents). However, due to fierce opposition by the vending machine industry, the gov’t decided against the change and all of the aluminum cents were recalled.

We know that 12 of them escaped the melting pot and were lost into private hands (there is also one at the Smithsonian). The individuals who had them either claimed to have lost them or refused to give them back.

All 12 of these are still at large (though not actively “hunted”). None of them have ever been sold publicly. They are considered unauthorized coinage and if any ever turn up, they will be confiscated by the gov’t.

Weren’t pennies (well, if you insist, cents) made of aluminium during WWII? It was some other metal, if I’m not mistaken.

johnston: the WWII cents were steel.