The last U.S. penny was minted last week, bringing to a close a 232-year run. Production may have stopped, but the coin won’t disappear immediately: pennies typically circulate for roughly 30 years, so they’ll remain in pockets and registers for decades yet.
The penny’s lineage reaches back overseas, tracing to the British penny and the German pfennig (from pfanne, meaning pan). The earliest American one-cent piece was a private 1787 fugio cent — a 100% copper coin stamped with “Mind Your Business” and a sundial reminder that time flies. The first official U.S. one-cent coin followed in 1793. In 1909 Abraham Lincoln became the first president depicted on U.S. coinage, marking the centennial of his birth; the phrase “In God We Trust” later became a standard motto on U.S. coins and was eventually adopted as the national motto.
For generations the penny helped pay soldiers, buy small everyday items like gumballs, and make change. Today its buying power is tiny. Modern pennies are mostly zinc (about 97.5%) with a thin copper plating, and manufacturing costs exceed face value. In 2024 the U.S. Mint estimated it cost roughly 3.69 cents in materials and production to make a single penny.
Despite that practical decline, the penny’s cultural life is robust. It survives in language and custom — sayings such as “in for a penny,” “a penny for your thoughts,” “my two cents,” and “a penny saved is a penny earned” keep the coin alive in conversation. Small rituals—slipping a bright penny into a bride’s shoe for luck or dropping one in a pay-phone loafer—persist in memory and tradition. As aphorism scholar James Geary has observed, the penny’s smallness makes it especially suited to short, memorable sayings.
Some myths about the penny have also lingered. The idea that a penny dropped from the Empire State Building could kill someone below is urban legend; a penny’s light weight and shape cause it to flutter, not attain lethal speed, a fact demonstrated in tests like those on MythBusters.
Though its production has ended, the penny will taper out of active use slowly. It will remain in language, in collections, in the odd tip jar and the bottom of a purse — a modest piece of American history that served well beyond its monetary value. Along with the dime, nickel and quarter, the penny retires as a humble, long-serving emblem of everyday life. Rest well, penny.