The last penny was minted today in Philadelphia:
The last penny ever to be made was finally struck at the US Mint in Philadelphia on Wednesday — after President Trump cancelled production of the costly copper coin after 232 years.
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And just like that, the coin that’s been in production since 1793 will never again be made.
It is, I think, a sad occasion.
Penny production was cancelled by Trump for the 2026 year after the coin started to cost about four times more to make than the 1 cent it is actually worth in US currency.
Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that pennies are a bad idea. A single penny may be used for hundreds or thousands or transactions. The nickel, for what it is worth, costs 14 cents to produce.
This, though, is more significant:
Trump and other critics have also argued that the penny has become an obsolete denomination with little use in modern markets – and that there are already billions in production to tide America over for the foreseeable future.
You could see that the penny was on the way out when gas stations and other retail establishments set up “take a penny, leave a penny” signs. The pennies were no longer worth worrying about.
Why do I think the demise of the penny is sad? Because it is a tangible marker of the steady inflation that has eroded the value of our currency. In 1900, the dollar was worth $38.57 in today’s money. So a penny was worth more than 38 cents–well over the value of today’s quarter. Let’s hope the dollar is not on its way to becoming like the yen; a single yen is today worth $.0065, or 65/100 of one penny. Literally not worth printing.
And, while it is true that there will be pennies in circulation for years to come, there will not be any shiny new ones. A new copper penny’s shine is different from, and vastly superior to, that of the silver (or “silver”) coins. A shiny new penny heralds the beginning of a new year.
Quite a few years ago, when I was a kid, I got a shiny new 1957 penny. The older pennies were, by contrast, dull. It struck me as the symbol of a new age dawning: 1957 was modernity, everything before then was a somewhat misty past. I still feel that way. For me, 1957 was the beginning of the modern world.
The humble U.S. penny, RIP.
