The Canadian government plans to stop the circulation of the penny at the end of 2012 in an effort to cut costs.

The copper-coated coin is more expensive for the Royal Canadian Mint to produce than it's worth.

According to CNN, it costs the government 1.6 cents to produce each new penny. Eliminating it will save about $11 million a year.

There probably won't be a large part of the Canadian public that will mourn the passing of the penny, the general manager of Canadian Coin and Currency, Dennis Pike, told The Toronto Star. They just clutter up peoples' change jars.

It isn't likely that they will be worth much to collectors, Pike said. There are simply too many in circulation. Common, used Victorian-era Canadian pennies sell for as little as $3.

The penny will still be accepted as a form of currency indefinitely, but cash transactions will eventually be rounded to the nearest five cent increment.

If there's a rounding up, you'd see a rounding down somewhere else, Craig Wright, chief economist at the Royal Bank of Canada, told Businessweek.

The penny has simply outlived its purpose, Senator Irving Gerstein told Yahoo. It is a piece of currency, quite frankly, that lacks currency.

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