Now stop and just follow me for a few sentence and stay with me. The US started on basically a silver standard, had a brief fiat period during the Civil War, then went to a gold standard, then introduced Federal Reserve Notes and tinkered with the gold standard, then took the silver out of the coins, then came off the gold standard completely, and has been running on fiat since 1971, with some chatter lately of bringing back gold as I mentioned. Now all during those times, the one cent coin was unchanged in legal tender status, other than changing size a couple times, but the old large cents are to this day still legal tender. So, assuming the US dollar went back on a gold standard, there is no reason in my mind why we would alter the penny and nickel coins, since they are virtually the exact same pennies and nickels we used back when gold was $20 an ounce or $35 an ounce (other than the copper to zinc change). So while FRNs or bank digit dollars may go to zero, or be de-valued, I can't see any logical reason why the government would make all new pennies and nickels instead of just keeping the ones we've always used.
Conclusion:
When gold was $20/oz, we used the Lincoln cent. When it was $35/oz, we used the Lincoln cent. When in was $42.22/oz, we used the Lincoln cent. When gold hit $1600, we still used the Lincoln cent. The fact is that a penny is really just a handy token for making change, not really something intended to be traded for its intrinsic value like higher denomination gold and silver coins (CTUs aside). I think that, if the US returns to a gold-backed dollar at some point in the future, there is a decent shot that we will retain our small change coins as they are. Therefore, your penny could conceivably go from being worth 1/160,000th of an ounce of gold, to something much higher. Its something to ponder.
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