Why it's time to retire the penny: on its 100th birthday, the penny is America's most unloved coin.

• Author: Haberman, Clyde
• Position: OPINION

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Not a chance, my neighborhood news dearer said. He's a friendly guy, but no way was he about to count the 75 pennies offered as payment for two newspapers. And the woman at the bakery was absolute about not accepting 215 pennies for a danish.

Who could blame them?

My penny antics were not meant seriously. They were intended to test reactions to a legitimate, if unusual, method of payment. It confirmed what most people would have already guessed: No American coin is as unloved as the humble penny.

Many reject it as change, tossing it instead into the tip baskets that sit on many store counters. Few stoop to pick up a penny on the sidewalk.

Most Americans would just as soon see it disappear, with business transactions rounded to the nearest nickel. A few European countries have brazed the trait, abolishing their smallest coins as a waste.

Nothing like that is about to happen in this country, certainty not as we enter the 100th year of the one-cent piece bearing Abraham Lincoln's profile. Next February 12 is the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, and the 100th anniversary of the Lincoln penny. The U,S. Mint plans to issue four new designs for the penny's reverse side, each representing a different phase of Lincoln's tile.

So the penny will stick around. The question is how to make it affordable. Sharply rising world prices in recent years for its components, zinc and copper, have made it a money loser. The same holds for the five-cent coin, made of copper and nickel.

Last year, it cost the Mint 1.67 cents...