"All good things must come to an end," the old saying goes. Most mediocre and forgotten things eventually fade away too. It is with that in mind that we now bid farewell to the United States one-cent coin.
That's right, the U.S. Mint is now out of the penny business for good.
ICYMI:
After 232 years, the U.S. Mint has retired the penny.
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 12, 2025
The end of its production comes amid a years-long farce of the government producing coins that cost more to make than they are worth. https://t.co/ThTcYYWDaX pic.twitter.com/TriOeVYPdW
I'm writing this late Wednesday afternoon. After reading approximately 27 million words of news and not being inspired to write about anything, the news that the penny is kaput hit me in an odd way. It felt like news that happened ten years ago. Honestly, how many of you thought that we'd stopped making the penny a long time ago?
The way we pay for things has so radically changed that physical currency itself almost seems anachronistic. I only keep cash around to put in the collection envelope for church. Yes, I could pay online, but I'm a mediocre Christian who wants people to see me tithing. I could also tithe with checks but that would mean that I still had checks.
The penny was practically a museum piece when I was a kid. I'm not a young man, but the "penny arcade" and "penny candy" were already things from yesteryear when I was a boy. The penny's only function for most of my life was to help people who wanted to pay in exact change. Those people are still alive today — they've gone from busting out their coin purses in the grocery store line to being the last ones writing checks in that line, even though their penmanship ceased being functional when Bill Clinton was president. The sole function of these people has always been to annoy everyone in a checkout line.
My daughter is 27 and I'm not sure she's ever used change for anything. It's all just so quaint now.
Perhaps a lucky penny will become truly lucky now that it will be even harder to find. I saw one on the ground last week for the first time in seemingly forever and decided to leave it for someone who needed luck more than I do. A little superstition can go a long way with some people. I am not one of those people unless I'm watching a baseball game. I'm sure that if I ever find a $100 bill lying on the street my views on luck will immediately change.
I've got a bag of change stuck in a drawer, which I think I'll hang onto. It could all be worth something once the U.S. Mint gets out of the coin business altogether. Hurry up, U.S. Mint, I started investing late.
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