In 2013, the cost of making pennies and nickels exceeded their face value for the eighth year in a row. The cost of minting a penny stood at 1.8 cents, nearly twice its face value. Nickels cost twice as much as dimes — 9.4 cents vs. 4.6 cents — despite being worth only half as much.

The U.S. Treasury spends nearly two dollars for every dollar of nickels or pennies it pumps into the economy. In contrast, a dollar's worth of quarters or dimes costs the government less than 50 cents. A dollar bill is even cheaper, coming in at less than a quarter.

All told, the Mint (and ultimately, U.S. taxpayers) lost $105 million on the production of pennies and nickels in 2013. That may be pocket change compared with last year's budget deficit of $680 billion, but in an era of budgetary austerity, it's enough to make politicians take notice.

Chief among them is President Barack Obama, who included a provision in his 2015 budget to "assess the future of currency" and ultimately develop "alternative options for the penny and nickel." What those alternatives might be is left vague.

The least-controversial approach would be to simply change the metal makeup of the coins to make them less expensive. Canadian nickels, for example, are 95 percent steel, which makes them cheaper to produce than their American cousins. As of last year, Canadian nickels cost less than their face value.

The other option would be to discontinue pennies and nickels — Canada ditched its pennies when their production cost approached 1.6 cents, below what U.S. pennies cost now.

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