Pennies Are No More as Production Ends

President Donald Trump may have achieved a significant bipartisan milestone on Wednesday by ceasing the production of pennies.

Since the Coinage Act was enacted by Congress in 1792, the penny has had a long history. However, things have evolved, and by 2025, it will be too expensive for the federal government to continue producing these coins that hardly get used.

On Wednesday, the last penny was minted at the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia.

Finance Minister Brandon Beach expressed gratitude, stating, “God bless America. It will save taxpayers $56 million,” just before he cast the final coin.

The decision to stop penny production has garnered support across party lines for quite some time. Back in 2013, former President Barack Obama commented that it served as “a good metaphor for some big problems.”

Efforts to phase out the penny date back even further. A proposal in 1989 aimed to round cash transactions to the nearest nickel but failed. During Trump’s first term, efforts by Republican Senators John McCain and Mike Enzi to halt penny production for a decade also didn’t succeed.

However, once Trump returned to office, the momentum to eliminate pennies picked up. The argument is pretty compelling: pennies cost taxpayers millions annually. In fact, the cost of making a penny increased in 2024.

According to reports, producing a penny requires more than three cents, resulting in a taxpayer burden of over $179 million in fiscal year 2023. That year, the Mint churned out over 4.5 billion pennies, roughly 40% of all coins made for circulation.

Following this, Trump announced in February that the penny would be eliminated. He stated, “For too long, the United States has been minting pennies that literally cost more than two cents. This is wasteful. I have instructed the Secretary of the Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let’s eliminate waste from the budget of our great nation, one penny at a time.”

Though pennies have become somewhat obsolete, they once played a crucial role in everyday transactions—remember “penny candy”? In the past, they could even buy postcards, newspapers, or a cup of coffee. Those were the days when the price of entering a Nickelodeon theater was just a nickel.

But time has moved on, and so have pennies. While they remain legal tender, many may choose to keep them as nostalgic tokens rather than as currency.

And with that, the age of the penny is officially over.