The Penny Is Dying. Will Anyone Mourn?

Pennies line the track for Union Pacific's No. 4014 “Big Boy” as it makes its way through Navasota, Friday, Oct. 4, 2024.

The American penny will begin its slow fade into non-existence as the government plans stop making the U.S. currency next year.

The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday announced a plan to stop putting new pennies into circulation by early 2026, marking the beginning of the end for the one-cent coin that has been part of American currency for more than 200 years, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Once new pennies are no longer entered into circulation, the coin’s availability dwindles and eventually there will not be enough coins for cash transactions.

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The U.S. Mint has made the last order of pennies and will end production of the coin when those run out, a Treasury Department said in a statement and first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

This puts the onus on businesses to either round up or round down to the nearest 5 cents.

President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama have been two of the more prominent proponents of ending production of the penny.

According to the U.S. Mint, the current cost of making one penny is 3.69 cents.

The AP reported earlier this year that the penny is the most popular coin made by the U.S. Mint, which reported making 3.2 billion the previous year.

In February, ABC News reported that Trump said on his Truth Social platform that he had directed the Treasury Department to stop minting new pennies, calling them "wasteful."

Speaking to the New York Times earlier this year, Obama called the penny "a good metaphor” for some of the problems of the U.S. government.

“It’s very hard to get rid of things that don’t work,” he said.

Obama has previously cited Americans’ nostalgic attachment to the penny, which is actually made of mostly zinc and one of the first coins minted in the U.S., as one of the reasons it remained in circulation.

“It’s one of those things where people get attached emotionally to the way things have been,” the former president said in 2013. “Those of us of a certain age…we remember our piggy banks, counting up all our pennies, taking them in and getting a couple of dollars for them. Anytime we’re spending more money on something that people don't actually use, that’s an example of something we should probably change.”