The United States Mint minted the last one-cent coin this Wednesday after 232 years of being legal tender. The country’s treasurer, Brandon Beach, was tasked with minting the last one-cent coin at the Philadelphia Mint.
The decision comes after US President Donald Trump ordered the Treasury earlier this year to stop producing pennies due to their irrelevance and high cost. Each penny, as this piece is popularly known, costs 3.7 cents. That is, each coin costs almost four times its value. Furthermore, producing and distributing currency becomes much more expensive every year. In 2024 it will become 20% more expensive, according to the Mint’s annual report. The rising cost of raw materials (the penny is 97.5% zinc with a copper coating) was driving up the cost of producing the coin.
“For too long America has minted coins that have literally cost us more than two cents,” Trump wrote on his Truth social network earlier this year. “This is a huge waste!” he added.
The dollar cent refers to one cent of the reference currency of the United States. The penny originated in 1793 in Philadelphia under the patronage of the country’s first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton.
The penny was 168 years more durable than the half cent. Nickel, dime, quarter, half-dollar, and dollar coins still survive, and they are almost exotic because they are difficult to find.
Even though the last coin was minted this Wednesday, pennies will still be in circulation. The Mint will go from producing 3.2 billion pennies during the last fiscal year to not producing any from now on. According to the American Bankers Association, about 250 billion pennies are still in circulation in the United States.
Cash is experiencing a slow decline with the advent of digital payments. Low-value coins such as the cent were hardly used to give change for purchases. Merchants have warned of a shortage of cents for transactions with their customers. Business associations in the business sector are lobbying Congress to pass a law authorizing the rounding of cash transactions.
The cent has been a very popular currency in the United States. It has had a cultural influence with a presence in music, film and fashion. Inspirer of great phrases —“Give me a penny for every idea and I’ll become a millionaire” or “Every penny counts”—. And the means by which the dreams of the little ones have come true. Pennies were used to buy candy, chewing gum or sweets. They were used for tips or to pay parking meters. Today, however, they are destined to collect dust in glass jars or get lost in drawers or pockets of old clothes.
A few cents can be worth a lot. There are strange pieces that are the object of the greed of collectors, who can pay large sums of money for them. For example, pennies with minting errors or in good condition, such as 1943 copper pennies.
Brandon Beach explained that the coins minted this Wednesday, the last cent, will be auctioned off. So the last pieces put into circulation with this value were minted last June.
“The need to abolish the penny has been obvious to those in power for so long that the failure to make it happen has turned the currency into a symbol of deeper rot,” notes an article published last year by the New York Times.
