1) It is worth EVERY penny.
They could mean, that is worth every penny ever created. So, what would that be worth? Well, penny isn't the official term for the coin, it's actually just called a "cent". The cent has gone through a lot of changes, so let's just talk about the current version, the Lincoln Memorial Cent. This coin was first minted in 1959. As of 1959, 420,017,088,390 cents have been pressed and put into circulation. That's 420 billion. 4.2 billion dollars worth of cents. It's estimated that about 2/3 of this number has been destroyed by the mint, or lost. So they could mean, "that was worth $1.4 billion."
2) It's worth what each penny is worth.
All cents are worth exactly $0.01 as legal tender. However, some cents are worth more as collectors items. For instance, the most valuable cent is a 1943 copper cent. The reason behind this is that in 1943 copper was needed for wartime efforts in World War II, so the cents were pressed with steel instead of copper. However, one sheet of copper was already in the press, so that sheet was pressed. It is believed that there are only about 20 of them still in existence. The most one of these has ever sold for was over $200,000. So they could mean, "that was worth somewhere between $0.01 and $200,000.00." Not quite as valuable, but still pretty respectable.
3) It's worth every penny's actual value. Well, how much is a cent actually worth? As of 1982, cents are composed of 97.5% zinc, 2.5% copper, and weigh 2.5 grams. Prices of metals fluctuate, but as of 8/27/07, zinc was priced at $1.3943 per pound, and copper at $3.3435 per pound. Cents used to be composed of 95% copper and 5% zinc, but since copper is more expensive, this wasn't very cost effective.
Cost of Zinc in a cent:
2.5g cent * 0.975g zinc/1g cent * 1 lb zinc/453.59237g zinc * $1.3943/1 lb zinc = $0.0074925
Cost of Copper in a cent:
2.5g cent * 0.025g copper/1g cent * 1 lb copper/453.59237g copper * $3.3435/1 lb copper = $0.0004605
Adding these two costs together gives you $0.0079530. Given that one cent is worth exactly $0.01 as legal tender, that means the value of a cent is 79.530% of it's worth. Keep in mind that this number fluctuates with time. So they could mean, "that was worth 79.53% of what I paid."
4) It's worth every penny - which is nothing. Some people are pushing for the elimination of the cent. Some reasons are that due to inflation, it's just not worth enough to bother with. A more important point however, is that the coin contains about $0.008 worth of metal, but the cents cost about $0.006 to produce, bringing their total production cost up to about $0.014, more than their worth as legal tender. Why lose money like this? So I'm sure that cents will be worth their value for a while, but I can see a point where everywhere except banks stop taking cents. In that case, if you just have one cent, or even four cents, there's not much you can do with it, since you can't trade it into to the bank. So essentially it will be worthless. So they could mean, "that was worth nothing."
This all came to me because the other day I thought of the phrase in my head, and then my head started whirring. Yeah this is how my mind thinks. Hope you enjoyed a trip into the sea of tangents that is Will's mind. My references are below if you're interested. The pages with an (*) are particularly interesting. Aside from the interesting ones, they're in no particular order.
References:
1982-2007 Lincoln Zinc Penny Melt Value - Coinflation.com*
The MegaPenny Project | Two Hundred Billion Pennies*
Penny Composition
United States Mint coin production - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lincoln Cents - Memorial Reverse
Fun Facts about the United States Mint
1943 steel cent - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cent (United States coin) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Efforts to eliminate the penny in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Production Figures - The United States Mint
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