I’m talking about pennys from the 19-20th century.
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Sort of, but it would have gone in the other direction. Money is made to fit the market and prices, not the other way around. For instance, the idea of spending $100 existed long before the first $100 bill was printed in 1862. If a coin is needed to represent a penny the government will make it. Or rather they’ll make it if it costs less than a penny to do so (which is where your calculation comes in).
The value of a penny is decided by the government, which is to say they decide that a penny is $0.01. Funnily enough, I had heard somewhere it actually costs more to make a penny than it’s currently worth!
In the middle ages, yes; in the 19th and 20th century, no. By then, the value of a (British) penny was just defined as 1/240 of a pound sterling; however much that would be worth.
In the early 19th century, it was the other way round: The penny was minted out of copper or bronze, and it was supposed to contain its value in copper (but the value wasn’t *defined* by that; the value was defined by the value of the pound). This resulted in impractically large coins however, so in 1860 they gave up and made the penny smaller. Since then, the value of a penny has had nothing to do with its material.
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