Americans for Common Cents is an organization based in Washington, D.C. that lobbies in favor of keeping the United States penny in circulation.
That year, they commissioned a study which concluded that if the penny were eliminated, rounding purchases up to the nearest five cents could cost consumers $1.5 billion over a five-year period.
[3] In 2000, the organization asked Raymond Lombra to conduct a study on the effects of eliminating the penny on the rounding of prices.
Lombra did so, and his study estimated that consumers would pay an extra $600 million per year in rounded-up costs were the penny to be eliminated.
[11] They commissioned another survey in 2012 which came to a similar conclusion; namely, that about two-thirds of Americans supported keeping the penny.