A Penny Short: U.S. Mints Its Final 1‑Cent Coins After More Than 230 Years

The Unit­ed States Mint has offi­cial­ly pressed its final batch of pen­nies, end­ing the run of a coin that has been part of Amer­i­can life for over two cen­turies.

The very last 1‑cent pieces were struck on Wednes­day at the Philadel­phia Mint.

What was once a sym­bol of thrift, good luck, and even a handy tool for coin flips will now become a piece of Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

“Today, we retire the pen­ny,” announced Derek Theur­er, per­form­ing the duties of Deputy Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury, dur­ing remarks deliv­ered at the same mint where the very first U.S. pen­nies were cre­at­ed more than 230 years ago.

U.S. Trea­sur­er Bran­don Beach called the moment his­toric, not­ing that the last time Amer­i­ca dis­con­tin­ued a coin was the half-cent back in 1857.

Beach per­son­al­ly stamped the final pen­nies at the event. These spe­cial coins bear a unique Omega mark and will not enter cir­cu­la­tion — instead, they will be auc­tioned off to col­lec­tors.

“Giv­en the rapid mod­ern­iza­tion of the Amer­i­can wal­let, the Depart­ment of the Trea­sury and Pres­i­dent Trump no longer believe con­tin­ued pen­ny pro­duc­tion is fis­cal­ly respon­si­ble or nec­es­sary,” Beach said. He empha­sized that the cost of mint­ing a sin­gle pen­ny has soared to 3.69 cents — more than triple its face val­ue.

Despite pro­duc­tion end­ing, Beach clar­i­fied one impor­tant point:

“Although today we say good­bye to our cop­per one-cent coin, the pen­ny remains legal ten­der. Over 300 bil­lion pen­nies are still in cir­cu­la­tion, and we encour­age you to use them.”

Why the Penny Is Ending

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump had sig­naled the move months ear­li­er in a Truth Social post, crit­i­ciz­ing the cost of pen­ny pro­duc­tion.

“For far too long the Unit­ed States has mint­ed pen­nies which lit­er­al­ly cost us more than 2 cents,” he wrote. “This is so waste­ful! I have instruct­ed my Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury to stop pro­duc­ing new pen­nies. Let’s rip the waste out of our great nation’s bud­get, even if it’s a pen­ny at a time.”

Accord­ing to the Mint’s annu­al report to Con­gress, pen­ny pro­duc­tion result­ed in $85.3 mil­lion in loss­es in fis­cal year 2024 alone.

A Final Look at the Penny’s Long Life

The sto­ry of America’s 1‑cent coin stretch­es back to 1787, when the very first unof­fi­cial pen­ny — the Fugio cent — appeared. These ear­ly coins were made from the met­al bands that once held togeth­er French gun­pow­der kegs shipped to the U.S. dur­ing the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War.

The offi­cial U.S. one-cent piece debuted in 1793. At the time, it was near­ly as large as today’s quar­ter.

Over the next two cen­turies, the pen­ny evolved mul­ti­ple times in both design and com­po­si­tion. Abra­ham Lincoln’s por­trait was added in 1909 to mark the cen­ten­ni­al of his birth, mak­ing him the first real per­son to appear on U.S. coinage.

Though its val­ue dimin­ished over the decades, the pen­ny remained a famil­iar com­pan­ion in Amer­i­can pock­ets — tossed into foun­tains, used for coin toss­es, and col­lect­ed in jars nation­wide.

Now, after more than 230 years, its final chap­ter has been writ­ten.

From this point on, a pen­ny saved real­ly will be a piece of his­to­ry saved.