The House passed legislation Thursday to change the composition of pennies and nickels, addressing dramatic rises in metal prices that have made the coins more expensive to produce than their face value.

Action now moves to the Senate, where the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee has a similar bill, though no action has yet been scheduled.

According to the U.S. Mint, it costs 1.26 cents to make a penny and 7.7 cents to make a nickel. The House bill, sponsored by Zack Space , D-Ohio, estimates that reducing the cost of penny production to face value would save approximately $500 million over 10 years, while similar changes to nickel production would save $60 million annually.

“Right now our government is needlessly throwing away money in the production of coins,” Space, a member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, said during floor debate on the bill May 6.

The measure would allow for the minting of pennies made primarily of steel but coated with a copper-colored dye so they appear similar to the current zinc-copper alloy. It also would require the production of 5-cent coins made primarily of steel, with a coating of nickel, in place of the nickel-copper composition originally authorized in 1866 when the coins were first minted.

The last time the penny and the nickel were produced at face value was fiscal year 2005, according to the Mint.

In a May 6 letter to House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank , D-Mass., Mint Director Edmund C. Moy said he opposes the bill because it proposes an “unrealistic timeframe” of just nine months for the production of steel-based pennies.

Metallic changes to nickels would be required two years after the bill’s enactment.

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