Casinos Gird for “Pennygeddon,” MGM and Caesars Will Round Up
The U.S. officially stopped producing new pennies in 2025 after more than 230 years of continuous minting. That means America is facing “Pennygeddon,” a word we made up, when the supply of pennies dries up.
On the bright side, we got our hands on an internal MGM Resorts document that shows the casino company will “round up to benefit customers” in transactions involving cash where change is involved. A Caesars Entertainment rep confirms it, too, will round up.
That means casino customers are about to receive a windfall, if we are using “windfall” to mean “you are about to save dozens of cents when you purchase Red Bull and chips in a casino gift shop.”
Why did they stop making pennies? Because it cost about 3.7 cents to manufacture each penny. Even a government populated by people with questionable brain power understands that’s not a smart way to spend our valuable taxpayer dollars.
That means businesses, including Las Vegas casinos, will soon be unable to order pennies.
In other words, Pennygeddon. Or Pennypocalypse. Or Centastrophe. We honestly have nothing better to do with our time than make up words like this.
So, in an attempt to mitigate the impact of the Circulation Extinction Event, casino companies have informed employees of the momentus decision to round up to the nearest nickel.
Here’s the MGM Resorts memo that mentions the company’s “Interim Penny Transition Plan.” You aren’t laughing at “Pennygeddon” now, are you?
The most important parts: “Rounding will only be applied when guests pay cash and receive change. Digital transactions made using a debit card, credit card, gift card or mobile app will still process to the exact cent and are not impacted.”
Also, transactions are to be rounded up to the nearest nickel (.05) in favor of the guest. When giving change: 1-4 cents, round up to .05; 5 cents, stays .05; 6-9 cents, round up to .10 or the next .00.
People often complain about their treatment by casinos, but this policy (however interim it might be) is “in favor of the guest.”
Those pennies might not mean a lot to you, but if you multiply them by millions of transactions, those pennies add up for casinos. The average cost to the casinos per affected transaction will be 2.5 cents.
If a casino has 15,000 qualifying cash transactions per day, with an average rounding cost of 2.5 cents, that’s $137,000/year. Small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, but that’s a full-time table games or surveillance manager in casino dollars (including medical coverage and other benefits).
Casinos don’t have to round up, of course. They could do what Canada does.
Canada eliminated use of pennies in 2012. They don’t round up, they round up or down symmetrically.
If 1-2 cents are due, businesses round down to zero. If it’s 3-4 cents due, they round up to a nickel. Over time, businesses and customers don’t gain or lose. It’s a wash.
Casinos, at least for now, will be “losing” money by rounding. And by that we mean if you’re paying $7.02 for a Snickers bar, and they round it down to $7, are they actually losing anything?
Why have casinos made the decision to round up, at least temporarily? Hello, it’s called generosity!
Just kidding, it’s optics-driven generosity and biding some time until everyone figures out what to do about this bookkeeping nightmare.
See, even if casinos rounded their prices, the tax would make the cost uneven again. The Clark County sales tax is 8.375%, so there’s no way to avoid pennies being involved. Tax will always reintroduce fractional cents.
The entire dilemma could be solved if the sales tax were eliminated, which is as likely as Criss Angel teaching a Modesty 101 course at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Rounding up with pennies is a smart move on the part of casinos because it avoids providing ammunition to those perpetuating the “nickel-and-diming” narrative. Looking at you Daily Mail, and your epic clickbait headline, “Rip-Off Las Vegas’s Death Spiral Worsens as Shocking New Figures Show Just How Badly Tourism Slumped in 2025.” (Visitation was down about 7%.)
The long-term impact of Pennygeddon remains to be seen, but props to Las Vegas casinos for choosing the rounding up policy as visitors face a new and penniless world.
Casino customers will note that the pandemic-era coin shortage provided cover for many casinos to stop paying out coins at their TITO (ticket in, ticket out) kiosks. Some offer guests the opportunity to donate their change to charities, others just keep the coins or print out a ticket the guest must schlep to the cage to get their change. Most folks just abandon the tickets at the kiosk. Casinos get 25% of abandoned tickets, with 75% going to the state’s general fund.
Personally, we are saddened by the demise of the penny because pennies have always been a symbol of good luck for gamblers. The tradition of picking up face-up pennies (and avoiding face-down pennies) is hardwired into our brain.
Our favorite lucky charm was given to us by our grandmother, now playing Blazing 7s slots in Heaven.
A lot of changes related to pennies going away will be invisible. Armored car drivers will rejoice (pennies are heavy), cash drawers will get simpler, counting errors will decline, coin-processing machines will get reconfigured.
Don’t worry, they’ll keep making “penny” slots. Nobody’s ever actually wagered a penny on a penny slot. They’re the most profitable slot machines for casinos.
A twist: The cost to produce a nickel is about 10.4 cents.
Don’t panic, though. “Nickelgeddon” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
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