Obituary: The United States One-Cent Coin, 1793–2025

PHILADELPHIA — The United States one-cent coin, known to friends and enemies alike as "the penny," died Wednesday, November 12, 2025, at the Mint in Philadelphia. Penny was 232.

The cause was a combination of irrelevance and rising costs. Long outmatched by inflation and betrayed by the price of its own metals, the penny had, in recent years, cost more than three cents to produce for every cent of official value. The Treasury Department, after decades of warnings, finally withdrew life support.

The last batch of pennies was quietly struck on coining presses that had, for generations, turned out billions of its siblings. No final words were recorded. (The penny was never much for speeches; it preferred to let cash registers, tip jars, and couch cushions do the talking.)

A Life in Many Faces

The penny was a master of reinvention, changing its front (obverse) and back (Reverse) as the country around it transformed.

Obverses (Front): Who the Penny Has Been

1. 1793–1857 — Liberty in Many Guises
2. The earliest cents were large and heavy, featuring classical versions of Lady Liberty:
   1. Flowing Hair / Chain Cent (1793) – Liberty on the front, a chain on the back.
   2. Wreath & Liberty Cap Cents (1793–1796) – Liberty with a Phrygian cap, symbol of freedom.
   3. Draped Bust & Classic Head Liberty (late 1790s–1830s) – A softer, portrait-style Liberty.
   4. Coronet / Braided Hair Liberty (1839–1857) – A more refined, bun-hairstyle Liberty.
3. 1856–1858 — Flying Eagle
4. A brief but dramatic phase: Liberty disappeared, and a flying eagle took over the front of the first small cents.
5. 1859–1909 — "Indian Head" (Still Liberty)
6. The coin wore what we now call the Indian Head design: actually, Liberty in a Native American headdress, not an Indigenous person, reflecting 19th-century romanticism more than reality.
7. 1909–2025 — Lincoln
8. For its last 116 years, the penny has carried the profile of Abraham Lincoln, introduced in 1909 to commemorate his centennial.
9. Lincoln outlasted every reverse design change that followed, presiding over the penny's long decline from "purchasing power" to "pocket lint."

Reverses (Back): Where the Penny Has Traveled

1. 1793 — Chain Reverse
2. A ring of 15 linked chains represents the states. Critics thought it looked more like shackles than unity. It was retired almost immediately.
3. 1793–1857 — Wreaths & Agricultural Motifs
4. Liberty on the front, wreaths, vines, and agricultural symbols on the back — tying the young currency to land and labor.
5. 1857–1858 — Wreath with "ONE CENT"
6. On the small Flying Eagle cent, the Reverse carried a simple wreath around the denomination.
7. 1859–1909 — Indian Head Wreath & Shield
8. A laurel or oak wreath encircling "ONE CENT," topped with a shield, bracketing the Civil War and the Gilded Age.
9. 1909–1958 — Wheat Ears ("Wheat Back")
10. Two wheat stalks hugged the words "ONE CENT," making the coin's Reverse instantly iconic. The "wheat penny" would later become the starter Pokémon of many young collectors.
11. 1959–2008 — Lincoln Memorial
12. To honor Lincoln's 150th birthday and the Lincoln Memorial, the Reverse shifted to the monument in Washington, D.C., with a tiny seated Lincoln visible between the columns if you squinted hard enough or had a good magnifying glass.
13. 2009 — Bicentennial Quartet
14. For Lincoln's 200th birthday, the penny celebrated his life with four rotating reverses:
    1. Birthplace Log Cabin (Kentucky)
    2. Young Lincoln reading on a log (Indiana)
    3. Lincoln as a lawyer in Springfield (Illinois)
    4. The half-built Capitol dome (Washington, D.C.)
15. 2010–2025 — Union Shield
16. The final design featured a Union shield with a banner reading "ONE CENT", meant to evoke national unity and continuity. It turned out to be more of a shield against nostalgia than against the budget axe.

A Career Spent Doing the Little Things

The penny's daily duties were humble but constant:

1. Completing $1.99 and $4.99 price points.
2. Filling tip jars and church collection plates.
3. Serving as good-luck charms when found heads-up on sidewalks.
4. Paying for penny candy before candy forgot what a penny was.
5. Being sacrificed in wishing wells to fund municipal superstition.

Over time, however, its ability to actually buy anything expired. Vending machines shunned it. Parking meters ignored it. Children, once its biggest fans, learned to swipe rather than count.

The Policy Endgame

For years, economists warned that the penny had entered an upside-down existence:

1. Face value: 1¢
2. Production cost: more than 3¢
3. Net effect: a tiny, copper-colored deficit generator.

Even as the Mint pared back production, billions more sat idle in jars, drawers, and glove compartments, effectively self-sequestered from circulation. When the White House finally ordered a halt to penny production and the Treasury wound down blanks and dies, the obsolescence became official.

The final blow was not moral, cultural, or sentimental. It was largely spreadsheet-driven.

Survived By

The penny is survived by a crowded, slightly anxious family of coins:

1. The Nickel, worth five cents but costing more than ten cents' worth of metal and labor to make, now glances nervously at budget reports.
2. The Dime is compact, efficient, and currently feeling a bit smug.
3. The Quarter is the main workhorse of vending machines, laundromats, and parking meters.
4. The Half Dollar, rarely seen in the wild but technically still alive.
5. The Dollar Coins — including the Susan B. Anthony, Sacagawea, and Presidential series — are insisting to anyone who will listen that they, too, are legal tender.

A vast diaspora of approximately hundreds of billions of pennies also remains at large, clinking softly at the bottoms of jars, piggy banks, and fountain basins. They will linger for decades, slowly slipping out of circulation into memory.

Predeceased

The penny joins a long line of retired American coins, including:

1. The Half Cent (1793–1857) is its smaller, often forgotten sibling.
2. The Large Cent, the penny's original plus-sized self, phased out when the small cent arrived.
3. The Two-Cent Piece (1864–1873), the first coin to bear "In God We Trust," and one of the earliest to exit.
4. The Three-Cent Silver and Three-Cent Nickel coins are artifacts of odd-denomination experiments.
5. The Half Dime, precursor to the modern Nickel.
6. The short-lived Twenty-Cent Piece (1875–1878), whose brief career is best described as "a confusion."

Several retired paper currency designs have also gone ahead, including large-format "horse blanket" notes and high-denomination bills, but the penny's family prefers not to speculate about the afterlife of paper money.

Services and Memorials

In lieu of flowers, Americans are encouraged to:

1. Empty their penny jars and spend or deposit their contents,
2. Or preserve a few in penny loafers, scrapbooks, and junk drawers as keepsakes.

Private memorials will be held daily whenever someone opens an old coffee can labeled "SPARE CHANGE" and says, "Wow, look at all these pennies. What are we supposed to do with them now?"

The penny will be remembered for what it was: Too small to count, too stubborn to ignore, and, in the end, too expensive to keep.

They took Abe away,
but my thoughts still wander back-
heads up for good luck.