End of an Era

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 At the risk of sounding dramatic, we are at the end of an era. 

On Thursday, May 22, the Wall Street Journal reported that the United States had “placed its last order for blank pennies and plans to stop minting the one-cent coins as soon as that’s exhausted.” 

The official announcement came three months after President Donald Trump announced his intention to abolish the denomination in an attempt to save money. According to an unnamed Treasury official, the cost of producing the cent is now a little over three and a half cents per coin, and eliminating the denomination would “result in the immediate savings of $56 million a year.” 

The Cent’s Beginning

As a denomination, the cent was first authorized in April 1787, and coins struck pursuant to this legislation—the Fugio cents—were in circulation prior to the adoption of the Constitution in September of that year. Cent patterns were among the earliest coins the U.S. Mint struck after its establishment in 1792, and the denomination has been issued regularly since 1793. 

Despite its long history, the coin’s production cost has been an issue from the very start. The earliest cents the U.S. Mint issued weighed 208gr (roughly 13.5g), but the December 3, 1795, mint report noted that 

The average Price of Copper has so increased of late, that it deserves the Attention of the President, whether the discretionary Power given him by this Act ought not immediately to be exercised, by reducing the weight of the Cent…

As a consequence, the mint reduced the weight of the coin by around 20 percent in 1795. The advent of the Industrial Revolution led to a tremendous increase in the demand for copper. By the mid-19th century, the price of the metal had risen dramatically. In 1850 the mint began experimenting with the size and composition of the cent, and in 1857 the mint eliminated the 168gr copper cent and replaced it with a copper/nickel small cent. 

Later Changes to the Cent

The diameter of the cent has remained the same since the 1850s, but due to the cost or availability of copper, its composition has changed several times in the last century and a half. The earliest of these changes occurred at the end of the Civil War, when the circulation of lightweight copper political and advertising tokens demonstrated to mint officials that base-metal coinage need not contain its full value in copper. The mint changed the thickness and composition of its planchets in 1864 to a bronze format that would be in use until World War II, when copper became so valuable to the war effort that zinc-plated steel planchets were used in 1943. Bronze planchets returned the next year, but increases in the cost of copper led the mint to abandon the metal for copper-plated zinc in 1982. 

The Future of Collecting Cents

Despite—or perhaps because of—the many changes it has undergone, the cent is probably the most collected coin in the world. Its disappearance from our pockets is bound to change the way American coinage is collected. At least one article that I’ve read quoted a coin collector who wondered whether the demise of the “relatively cheap” penny might spell disaster for the hobby. However, anyone concerned about the health of the hobby would do well to look at the elimination of the large cent and its impact on collecting in the United States in the late 1850s.

Coin collecting in the U.S. prior to 1857 was not a particularly popular pastime, with most collectors concentrating their efforts on ancients or modern European coins. The disappearance of the large cent inspired scores of Americans to empty their pockets and study the coins they had long taken for granted. If history is any guide, the demise of the cent as a denomination could very well create a new generation of numismatists. 

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A version of this article appears in the July 2025 issue of The Numismatist (money.org).