Or, find cheaper material to make them out of.
Good point—I had not thought of that.
Injection molded plastic!
Actually, I think we are missing the point that “money” was originally intended to have intrinsic value.
Gold, silver, nickel, copper…
Now that our “money” is nothing more than electronic entries, printed paper and valueless tokens, why not plastic coins?
Hell, let’s solve the whole issue and make everyone billionaires with a few keystrokes on the computer.
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle suggested using spent fuel rods. The benefits are as follows:
Nobody would hoard the coins in an effort to avoid critical mass
Pending bank robbers would be easy to spot due the the lead suit
Payments for international debt could be delivered by ICBM
I can't remember the others.
Pennies currently are made of copper plated zinc. idk how much of the cost is due to materials, I would guess not much.