How will casinos handle the decommission of pennies?
Don’t worry.
Penny slots aren’t going to go away once the U.S. Treasury Department decommissions the copper-colored 1-cent coin currently in circulation in the United States.
The federal government has determined that it costs 3.69 cents to produce a penny, so it no longer makes sense to produce them, and plans to end production in 2026.
How gamblers will be paid if pennies are involved is something the Nevada Resort Association hopes to clarify in the months ahead as the organization observes its 60th anniversary.
The association, headed by President and CEO Virginia Valentine, is the voice of the resort industry, speaking on behalf of 61 resorts in Southern Nevada and 11 in the north.
NRA’s role
Guided by a board of directors currently chaired by John Maddox, senior vice president of government relations and development at Caesars Entertainment Inc., the NRA lobbies lawmakers during state legislative sessions, advocates on behalf of the industry on policy matters brought before regulators and government entities and publishes the 76-page “Nevada Gaming Fact Book” with statistics about the industry’s contributions to communities and their tax bases.
“When we go to the Legislature, we track more than 100 bills every session,” Valentine said in a recent interview. “A lot of the bills in various committees affect us as the state’s largest employer. We are the largest purchaser of health insurance and the largest taxpayer. So when there’s legislation involving things like workers’ comp, they affect us as employers.”
The association regularly weighs in on proposed gaming regulations before the Gaming Control Board and the Nevada Gaming Commission.
“I didn’t do much of that at all when I first got here. I think you’ve seen lately there’s been more with the new chair (Control Board Chairman Mike Dreitzer). He’s got some ideas on what he wants to do and leave his mark in either monetizing or progressing the industry.”
Involved on Kalshi lawsuit
One high-profile involvement the NRA asserted itself in involves a lawsuit filed in March against the Gaming Control Board and its members by KalshiEx LLC, a derivatives prediction market federally regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Kalshi sued the state after the Control Board issued a cease-and-desist demand when it began offering a market for predicting the outcome of sporting events.
Regulators viewed it as an unlicensed entity taking sports bets in violation of state law; Kalshi countered that it could write those contracts because they are federally regulated. That court case is expected to begin by the end of the year.
The judge overseeing the case allowed the NRA to become a part of the legal action. But now that the NRA is a litigant, Valentine no longer comments on the case.
“Over time, the organization has evolved to meet the needs of the industry as the industry has evolved,” she said.
Because of the diverse nature of the companies she represents, it occasionally occurs that the NRA can’t present a unified viewpoint on a particular issue.
She said since all members are hotel-casinos with more than 200 rooms and nonrestricted licenses, members are on the same page on issues 99 percent of the time, she said.
Alignment
“We don’t have manufacturers, suppliers, or vendors. We don’t have those different groups as members. So on most things, we’re aligned. But there have been one or two issues — online gaming is one of them — that the association becomes Switzerland (neutral),” she said.
But that won’t be the case for the treatment of pennies.
To be clear, penny slot machines — the most popular denomination on the state’s casino floors after multidenomination machines with nearly 30,000 units — won’t go away as the U.S. Mint stops producing pennies next year.
Machines will likely be recalibrated to distribute winnings rounded to 5 or 10 cents. Penny slots generally don’t take 1-cent bets and players insert paper money into machines to post digital credits of 100 per dollar.
Some retailers already have begun addressing how they’ll make change on a transaction if pennies are involved. Fast-food giant McDonald’s, for example, will round a dollar amount down on change if the price total lands on 1 or 2 cents and round it up if it lands on 3 or 4 cents and down on 6 or 7 cents and up on 8 or 9 cents.
First introduced in 1985, some of the most popular penny slot titles, according to the Gambling Zone website, include Play’n Go’s “Rich Wild and the Day of Dead,” Light & Wonder’s “Rainbow Riches” and IGT’s “Cleopatra.”
The Gaming Control Board hasn’t determined yet how it’s going to address the elimination of pennies.
“The Nevada Gaming Control Board is aware that the Department of the Treasury intends to phase out production of pennies and will monitor the situation for federal feedback and work with our industry partners to address any questions.”
The NRA will be representing those industry partners.
Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on X.
