Signs of the demise of America’s one-cent coin are everywhere these days.

“If you’re using cash, please try to provide exact change or use other methods of payment,” one sign in a Graul’s Market in West Annapolis reads. Dollar stores, convenience markets and other businesses across the region are posting similar messages.

Shiny new pennies won’t be refilling cash registers — the last of them were minted Nov. 12.

But life without the penny isn’t expected to have a major impact on the economy, experts said. Rather, it could be a small inconvenience for some businesses that worsens over time.

“It was bound to happen at one point, as the penny itself — its buying power —dribbled down to next to nothing,” said Jason Cherubini, executive in residence of finance at Loyola University Maryland’s Sellinger School of Business and Management. “And the move towards cashless payment also means that the need for cash, especially, has decreased.”

The cost to mint and ship a penny hit nearly 4 cents in recent years, meaning each one represented a net loss.

President Donald Trump called for an end to production of the Lincoln cent at the beginning of his second term, and the U.S. Treasury Department announced in May that it would stop minting the 232-year-old penny by early 2026.

Federal bureaucracy, for once, is ahead of schedule. But the government also appears to have no plan for removing the 300 billion existing pennies from circulation, according to The Atlantic, meaning that businesses will just spend down the ones they have, or new ones they receive, for the foreseeable future.

“As of right now, to be honest with you, we’ve got plenty,“ said Jim Mahoney, store manager at the Graul’s Market in Annapolis. ”We got what we could get from the bank, and then, you know, people have turned them in.”

As pennies become harder to find, retailers will have to make a choice: Round the pricing of items to the nearest nickel, make adjustments to their point-of-sale systems to account for the shortage, require exact change or push their customers to use credit and debit cards instead.

None of those options is foolproof.

Paying with exact change won’t last long as the number of pennies in circulation dwindles. Some businesses have stockpiled them by paying customers double the value of a penny in the form of a gift card.

It’s an opportunity for people to get rid of their low-value loose change in piggy banks and coin jars.

“It may not be life-changing money, but it’s a way to get some benefit out of something that’s just been taking up space,” Cherubini said.

Customers who plan to continue using cash will see their transactions rounded down or up to the nearest nickel, costing them a few less or a few more cents.

Nothing will change for the significantly more common debit and credit card transactions.

“We don’t get a lot of people paying in cash these days,” said Grace Baddock, assistant manager at Uptown Cheapskate, a consignment store in Timonium. “If we enter in that someone’s putting in under 5 cents with a transaction or paying with pennies, then it will just kind of round up to that 5 cents in our system. We have talked to our owners about how that will make the drawers a little bit off by a few cents at night.”

Eventually, though, the rounding will “chew into” the margins of businesses, like convenience stores, that still accept cash or are cash-only, Cherubini said, adding that it will likely force them to change their pricing.

There’s also the issue of sales tax on the rounded amount, something only state and local governments can tackle, Cherubini added. “Is it going to be charged off of the original price or off of the rounded price?”

The penny joins other discontinued denominations, including the half-cent, two-cent and twenty-cent coins. Its demise is a gut punch for hobbyists who have collections that stretch back to the 1790s.

“We’ll probably see this happen with the nickel 30 years down the line,” Cherubini said. “Between inflation, between us moving more and more cashless, we’re going to see this shift.”