Good interpretation, EmpressPixie.
I guess then, the missing piece of data we need is how much money and time is spent on minting new pennies in America. I do know that it costs about double the face value to produce a new penny, which is something to consider. The US Mint’s website issues annual reports each year which include the number of total coins they produce (in 2004 it was 13,479,620,000 coins). I’ve continued looking into the data from 2004 (they have data from 08 but it’s a 30MB pdf file, no thanks right now) and the report contains other data points which could be used to find out the potential savings in abandoning the penny.
There may also be revenue gained in melting down any remaining copper pennies, as well as the smaller amounts of money gained by melting down and selling the zinc pennies.
However, one thing this analysis will not determine is the cost for America to abandon the penny. Pretty much every single cash point will need to be updated to round up or down to the nearest nickel, prices will need to be reconsidered, and overall the American public will need to be “sold” the idea of losing the penny via marketing.
So the data exists, someone just needs to extrapolate it. Sadly, that person is not me.