The Death of the Penny: Why America’s Smallest Coin Is Finally Getting the Axe

Written By Michele Edington (formerly Michele Gargiulo)

Once upon a time, we bent to pick up pennies.

We dropped them into candy machines, balanced them on train tracks to watch them warp, flicked them into fountains and believed they could grant wishes. But now, the U.S. Mint has decided enough is enough.

The penny is no more.

A Copper Farewell

In May 2025, the U.S. Mint officially announced it was moving forward with plans to retire the penny…the coin worth one cent, the smallest in our monetary system, and the one that’s somehow cost more than a cent to produce for nearly two decades.

It’s not just impractical, it’s uneconomical.
Each penny costs 2.1 cents to make, thanks to rising prices of materials and labor, so it bleeds taxpayer money for the sake of nostalgia, not utility.

So, the decision to end it wasn’t just a whim, it was actually long overdue. As we say goodbye to the penny though, we’re not just letting go of a coin…we’re letting go of a fragment of American identity, a symbol of thrift, of childhood memories, of pocket change jingling in denim as the sun sets over the beach in the summer.

The math is maddening though to be honest. In 2023 alone, the Mint spent over $130 million to produce pennies, more than double their face value. The irony is almost poetic but it hurts so bad it’s really not funny, it costs more to keep the penny alive than it’s worth. And no, this isn't new that started because of one person or another, I know we all love to find someone to blame, but the truth is that the penny has been a fiscal burden for nearly 20 years. Since 2006, its production cost has regularly exceeded its face value, but we kept making them, out of tradition, inertia, and fear of public backlash.

Retailers and consumers don’t love the idea of rounding, but we already do it in practice. How many of us actually dig through our wallets for three cents at checkout? Cash transactions account for less than 20% of purchases at this moment in time, and even when we use them, most pennies end up in drawers, jars, and car cup holders, never to see a register again. At the restaurant I work at we don’t even take any change from people anymore, just round to the nearest dollar.

So why do we cling to the penny like it’s that door in the Titanic?

You can hold a penny, throw one into a magical fountain or give one to a kid and watch their eyes light up like they’ve just inherited the universe. Pennies are the first coins we earn, the ones we find heads-up on sidewalks and call lucky. They’re more than money…they're memories, and symbols of a time when a cent had weight in the world.

But that time is fading.

A History Stamped in Copper

The penny has been with us since 1793, when it was first struck in pure copper. Over the centuries, it’s changed designs, materials, and purpose, but never its stubborn presence in our pockets until now. Abraham Lincoln made his debut on the penny in 1909, the first historical figure to grace a U.S. coin. That made the penny more than currency, it became a tribute of some sort, a way to keep history close at hand.

During World War II, when copper was needed for ammunition, the Mint even produced steel pennies for a single year…1943.
These silvery oddities now shimmer in collectors’ cases like war medals for a coin that’s seen it all. But sentiment, like coinage, absolutely has a lifespan, and Lincoln, noble as he is, doesn’t hold enough purchasing power anymore to warrant mass minting.

If you’re wondering what a penny can get you now, the answer is: absolutely nothing.

Not a gumball, a piece of candy, a phone call, a wish (the price of these were hit hardest in this economy), or a sliver of gas. A penny today is worth about one-third of what it was in 1980, inflation has eroded its buying power into dust.

In a world where loaf of bread costs $3 and parking meters start at $2, the penny is a ghost, a mere memory of an economy that doesn’t exist anymore. I still somehow still find them though, abandoned in gutters and crosswalks, like fallen little soldiers of a forgotten war.

We’re not the first to say goodbye. Canada eliminated its penny in 2013, the sky didn’t fall. Businesses round to the nearest five cents, and the public barely blinked. Australia and New Zealand removed theirs decades ago, Sweden, Brazil, Finland, and many more have said their goodbyes without regret.

The economic logic is simple, small coins cost more to produce than they contribute to commerce. They slow down transactions, waste metal, and create storage issues for businesses and banks alike. Even the vending machine gave up on them.

So Why Keep the Penny?

The same reason we keep greeting cards we don’t reread (I have an entire giant box full of them for some reason, and no idea why I still do it). Or hold onto keys that no longer open doors like that one drawer at everyone’s house.

Because it’s hard to let go.

The penny feels American, like drive-ins, diners, and baseball, like grit and elbow grease, a symbol of frugality and fairness. Some argue that rounding up disproportionately affects the poor, that we shouldn’t remove the smallest denomination while wealth gaps widen, and that’s not a totally unreasonable and empty point.

At the same time, penny hoarding does not equal penny justice. A better solution would be electronic subsidy systems or digital vouchers, not clinging to a coin that costs more than it’s worth.

In truth, we’re already halfway to a cashless world. Most people under 40 rarely use coins, contactless payments, Apple Pay, Venmo, crypto…all reducing the need for physical currency. Even parking meters, toll booths, laundromats, and public transit are phasing out change and somehow increasing the price of parking by a ton in the process. Lucky us.

As society evolves, our money has to evolve too. The death of the penny isn’t the end of small value, it’s the beginning of a more streamlined system, one that reflects how we live now.

We’ll lose that thrill of spotting a lucky penny on the ground. There goes the metaphor: “a penny for your thoughts,” “a penny saved is a penny earned,” “pennies from heaven.”

It might be a fair trade-off though, we do gain efficiency, simplicity, and a dash of environmental benefits (zinc mining is no friend to the planet). Another positive is a government that stops throwing good money after bad, and we learn to place value where it belongs, not in copper tokens, but in equity, access, and modernity.

Even after the penny disappears from minting, it will live on in collections, time capsules, old jars in the garage, and fondly in our memory.

You can still find pennies from 1909, 1943, 1967, each with its own story, a snapshot of history. That’s what gives old money value: not its buying power, but its backstory. Which is really everything in life, from pennies to wine.

Like the French farmer who unearthed a fortune in buried gold, treasure isn’t always in the currency…it’s in the narrative, and the penny, for all its fading glory, has one of the richest narratives of all.

This moment invites reflection, not just about coins, but more about how we assign value.If we can’t let go of the penny, maybe it’s not about the money at all…but what if change (tehe) is exactly what we need?

Millionaires rarely keep change in their pockets. They invest in ideas, time, systems, in fact, most millionaires don’t even think in terms of dollars…they think in units of value, I feel like we should too. It could be time we traded the past for a lighter future.

Michele Edington (formerly Michele Gargiulo)

Writer, sommelier & storyteller. I blend wine, science & curiosity to help you see the world as strange and beautiful as it truly is.

http://www.michelegargiulo.com
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