The Royal Canadian Mint produces hundreds of millions of pennies each year and it's not because the old ones wear out, it's because once one gets them in their grip one apparently finds it hard to let go.

And their hoarding habit is costing the country a pretty penny.

The president of the Ottawa Coin Club, for instance, keeps his non-collectible pennies in piggy banks and cardboard tubes and every so often rolls them up and cashes them in at the bank.

Winnipeg MP Pat Martin, who submitted his first private member's bill calling for the one-cent coin to be taken out of circulation in 2006, says he keeps his in an old ice cream container under his bed.

But if Martin and others like him have their way, the 1/100th of a buck will stop here. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has referred the matter to the Senate finance committee, which has begun holding hearings on taking the penny out of circulation.

Or as the old saying goes, watch your pennies and the dollars will look after themselves.

The first bronze penny was struck at the Royal Canadian Mint 102 years ago. But the first Canadian pennies were struck in 1858, and the coin itself was introduced in England in about 757 AD.

Two studies produced in 2007 made strong arguments in favor of eliminating our lowest denomination coin. One, produced by Desjardins Group, argues the penny has "so little purchasing power that Canadians increasingly refuse it as change," yet, it costs the Mint at least $130 million a year to keep it in circulation.