Currency experts always said this would happen, but I never believed it would happen in my lifetime: the American penny is dead. The discontinuation of the penny has been abrupt to the point where I’m not even sure most Americans know it’s already happened. Maybe you’ve already seen it at some fast-food places if you’ve paid in cash – they’re starting to be weird about exact change, and if your change is only a few cents, they ask if you even want it. That’s because businesses dealing mostly or partially in cash have been trying out the penny-free transition in the past month. This week, the US Mint in Philadelphia struck the country’s last “new pennies.”
The U.S. Mint on Wednesday ended production of the penny, a change made to save money and because the 1-cent coin that could once buy a snack or a piece of candy had become increasingly irrelevant. The last pennies were struck at the mint in Philadelphia, where the country’s smallest denomination coins have been produced since 1793, a year after Congress passed the Coinage Act. Officials said the final few pennies would be auctioned off.
“God bless America, and we’re going to save the taxpayers $56 million,” U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach said just before hitting a button to strike the final penny.
Pennies remain legal tender, but new ones will no longer be made.
The last coin to be discontinued was the half-cent in 1857, Beach said.
President Donald Trump ordered the penny’s demise as costs climbed to nearly 4 cents per penny and the 1-cent valuation became somewhat obsolete. Billions of pennies remain in circulation, but they are rarely essential for financial transactions in the 21st century economy.
“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents,” Trump wrote in an online post in February. “This is so wasteful!”
Still, many people have a nostalgia for them, seeing them as lucky or fun to collect. And some retailers voiced concerns in recent weeks as supplies ran low and the end of production drew near. They said the phase-out was abrupt and came with no government guidance on how to handle transactions. Some rounded prices down to avoid shortchanging shoppers. Others pleaded with customers to bring exact change. The more creative among them gave out prizes, such as a free drink, in exchange for a pile of pennies.
“We have been advocating abolition of the penny for 30 years. But this is not the way we wanted it to go,” Jeff Lenard of the National Association of Convenience Stores said last month.
Yeah, that last part is what kills me – the penny issue has been around for so many years, and everyone knew that the “cost” to manufacture a penny exceeded the worth of the penny itself. And yet… it happened so suddenly, and people and businesses were and are unprepared. Many people still use pennies, at least I do. I’m Xennial – I carry cash and pay with cash for smaller purchases. Plus, I’m a low-key numismatist (coin collector) so I have jars of pennies and all kinds of coins around. I do wonder what this is going to do for penny collectors specifically. I guarantee that many collectors have already started hoarding pennies. Pennies from the last manufactured batches will be highly collectible as well.
Photos courtesy of IMAGO/Zoonar.com/Claudio Divizia/Avalon.
