The penny’s value isn’t quite what it used to be, which was never that much in the first place. It now costs more than a penny to manufacture one, with the coin’s component metals – primarily zinc, with a little copper – becoming ever more expensive.
That was the lede of a story I wrote 14 years ago, in an article for Politico, headlined, “Penny foes urge common sense.”
Penny haters now get their wish: After 232 years as an American monetary mainstay, production of the humble cent piece is officially kaput, with the U.S. Mint stamping its final round today in Philadelphia.
During a time not too terribly long ago, the demise of the penny — bearer of Abe Lincoln’s visage, tender for one’s rumination, vehicle for so many wishes in farm wells and shopping mall fountains — would have dominated headlines.
On Nov. 12, 2025, the penny’s pending doom seemed short-changed, superseded by bigger-ticket matters. The nation’s longest government shutdown was ending. Potentially damning emails written by Jeffrey Epstein about Donald Trump entered the public domain.
As of this hour, a penny obituary sat below 29 other articles on the New York Times’ homepage, underneath such urgent dispatches as “What the movies need from Sydney Sweeney,” “A home that proves you can never have too many books” and “The perfect Thanksgiving sweet potato casserole.”
So maligned and misbegotten has the penny become that it’s fading away even while the little-used Kennedy half dollar (23.2 million produced in 2025) and the Native American dollar coin (3.78 million produced in 2025) live to survive it, per U.S. Treasury figures.
Oh, and guess how many $2 bill notes the Bureau of Engraving & Printing produced in fiscal year 2023. The answer: 128 million. (Full disclosure: I never leave home without a few twos in my wallet, if only because I rarely meet people who aren’t completely delighted to receive them as payment, and as far as money goes, they’re just do damned handsome. Just ask for them at your bank branch, if you ever step foot in one.)
Penny-lovers nostalgic for a time when they could actually buy something — anything — with a handful of pennies, be it a piece of check-out counter candy, or perhaps a real-life, dead-tree newspaper, will be aghast to learn that coin usage in general is sinking like a roll of nickels tossed into the deep end of a swimming pool.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta concluded that Americans used cash money for just 14 percent of their transactions in 2024, down from 20 percent in 2020. Credit cards, followed closely by debit cards, are by far the consumer payment instruments of choice.
So why did pennies hang on for so long in the first place?
From my article in 2011:
With the economy as bad as it is, doing away with the penny is one of the worst things you could do to consumers,” said Mark Weller, executive director of Americans for Common Cents, a pro-penny advocacy group. “There are certainly trends that have moved us away from cash and coin, but many people, particularly the poor, use cash as their primary means of payment, and such a change would disproportionately affect them.”
The zinc industry, which primarily funds Americans for Common Cents and employs Weller as a lobbyist, has been particularly willing to put cash behind its penny preservation push.
Since 2006, Jarden Zinc Products of Greeneville, Tenn., has spent nearly $1 million lobbying the federal government, including $60,000 during the first half of this year. Federal lobbying disclosure documents indicate Jarden Zinc has regularly lobbied Congress and the U.S. Mint on issues including “issues related to the one-cent coin” and “penny re-design.”
Metal makers aren’t the only people whose steely resolve aims to ensure the penny’s continued circulation.
Take the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, which last year counted 10 million students who participated in its Pennies for Patients program. Together, they raised more than $20 million to battle the diseases.
“To the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, pennies matter,” society spokeswoman Kristin Hoose said. “These programs help students learn the value of achieving goals that benefit others and let them experience empathy and compassion.”
So say you find yourself with a fishbowl filled with every penny you got in change since the Clinton administration.
Or maybe you simply want to screw with the notoriously grumpy waiter at your otherwise favorite diner and leave your tip in cent pieces.
Take heart: The U.S. Mint states that yes, “the penny remains legal tender and may still be used for transactions.”