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The US mint on Wednesday ended pen production to save money and because a single coin that could buy a snack or a piece of candy was becoming increasingly useless.
The last papers were struck in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where the country’s smallest coins were produced since 1793, the year after the convention passed. Authorities said the last few pennies will be auctioned off.
“God Bless America, and we will save the taxpayers $ 56 million,” said the treasurer of the US BRANDOn Beach just before hitting the button to hit the last pen.
Pennies remain legal tender, but new ones will no longer be minted.
US Continues Penny Production Up to 13 Years After Canada Stopped Making Coins
The last coin to be minted in the US was the 1857 half, Beach said.
President Donald Trump wants the US mint to stop making new pennies, but is a single coin more trouble than it’s worth? Andrew Chang explains. Photos provided by Reuters, domestic photos and the Canadian security apparatus. (Additional credits: 1:55 – Late Night with Seth Meyers / YouTube; 1:58 – @ moose_0 / tiktok; 2:01 – @ tiktok; 2:02)
US President Donald Trump ordered the killing of the Penny as the cost rose to four cents per penny and the one-cent value ended. Billions of pennies are always in circulation, but they are rarely a financial transaction in the 21st century economy.
“The United States is far from the pennies that literally fall into danger,” Trump wrote in an online post in February. “This is wasting time!”
Appreciation, despite the decline
However, many Americans have a nostalgia for pens, seeing them as lucky or fun to collect.
Some retailers have expressed concern in recent weeks as supplies run low and production ends draw closer. They said this phase – was sudden and came without government guidance on how to deal with transactions.
Some prices are rounded down to avoid striking buyers. Others beg customers to bring about direct change. If more happened between them they gave out prizes, like a free drink, in exchange for a bunch of pennies.
“We’ve been advocating for the abolition of the pen for 30 years. But this is not the way we want to go,” said Jeff Lenard Association of convenience stores in the past.
Some banks, meanwhile, are starting to prepare things, a somewhat forced result of an effort to deal with what many see as coins. Over the past century, nearly half of the money minted at the Philadelphia and Denver Mints has been in pens.
But they still have a better rise in cost-of-value production than nickel, which costs about 14 cents a pound. A Dime Dimin, by comparison, costs less than six cents to produce and a quarter costs about 15 cents.
Penny is not that in 1793
In 1793, a penny could get you a biscuit, a candle or a piece of candy. These days, most live in cupboards or glass jars, and are shoved aside or collected.
Regardless of their value, collectors and historians view them simply as an important piece of history that can be traced back more than 200 years.
Frank Holt, Professor Emeritus at the University of Houston who has studied the history of coins, lamented the loss.
“We put a slogan on them and identify them, and we decide – in the case of the United States – which dead people are the most important to us and should be remembered,” he said.
“They reflect our politics, our religion, our art, and our sense of ourselves, our goals, our desires.”
