President Donald Trump talks of big change in his second term of office. But hes not forgetting small change, either.Trump ordered the Treasury Departmentto stop making pennies witha February 10 sentenceon his social media account that followed years of conservatives pointing out that putting a copper-coated zinc disc in your pocket costs the government more than a centalmost 4 cents today.Will Trumps order make the penny disappear? There is no sign that the U.S. Mint will stop pressing pennies in Denver and Philadelphia, and Mint officials did not respond to requests for clarification this week.But the presidential penny pledge is already being felt in one niche world. Its a little-known world that depends on buying pennies wholesale, loading them into machines and persuading parents to feed a few dollars into machines that stamp designs on the penniesPaw Patrol, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesas they are stretched between metal rollers at funfairs.Small orbits of collectors and craftsmen have developed around them. And without the penny, the whole thing faces an uncertain future.The last pennies?New copper pennies vanished from circulation in 198273 years after the first Lincoln penny was minted. They were replaced by coins of mostly zinc thinly coated with copper.The solid copper old ones were more pliable and easier to stamp, making them hot items for kids at funfairs.Theyll clean em so when they elongate the dino or shark of the printed coin it maintains a ghost image of the printed head of Lincoln, said Brian Peters, general manager of Minnesota-based Penny Press Machine Co. Pre-1982 copper pennies, they bring those.Jeweler Angelo Rosato worked for decades in the 1960s and 70s hand-printing pennies with scenes of their New Milford, Connecticut, hometown and historical and sentimental scenes. Everything was obsessively cataloged, including more than 4,000 penny photographs.Were big fans of the penny. Keep the penny, said Aaron Zablow of Roseland, New Jersey, who was with two of his sons at the American Dream mall.I like the pennies, his 9-year-old son Mason said.Some dont want the U.S. to stop making centsCritics say the rise of electronic commerce and the billions of pennies in circulation mean the U.S. could stop printing the copper coins tomorrow and see little widespread effect for decades. But some people are watching fearfully to see if Trumps public critique of the penny will affect their business.Alan Fleming, of Scotland, is the owner of Penny Press Factory, one of a number around the world that manufacture machines that flatten and stamp coins.A lovely retired gentleman in Boston sold me over 100,000 uncirculated cents a couple of years ago but he doesnt have any more, Fleming wrote. I will need to purchase new uncirculated cents within the next 12 months to keep my machines supplied and working!Regardless of what happens to niche businesses like Flemings, penny defenders say theyre an important tool for lubricating the economy even if theyre a money-losing proposition.Since the invention of money, humankind has wrangled with the question of small change, how to denominate amounts so small that the metal coin itself is actually worth more.In 2003, Thomas J. Sargent and another economist wrote The Big Problem of Small Change, billed as the first credible and analytically sound explanation of why governments had a hard time maintaining a steady supply of small change because of the high costs of production.Why pay money for coins?In a digital world with the line blurring between the real and the virtual, tactile coins have been reassuring.What this all tells you about the United States as a country is that its an incredibly conservative country when it comes to money, said Ute Wartenberg, executive director of the American Numismatic Society.Pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters are sometimes designed by artists laser-sculpting tiny portraits of leaders and landmarks using special software.Its pretty cool because when I tell people what I do I just say my initials are on the penny, Joseph Menna, the 14th chief engraver of the United States Mint, said in the 2019 film Heads-Up: Will We Stop Making Cents?Fleming is hoping some lobbying may help: Maybe we should take a trip to Washington and ask to speak to President Trump and Elon Musk and see if we can cut a deal on buying millions of pennies from them.By Michael Weissenstein and Joseph B. Frederick, Associated Press