The Last Red Cent

It’s not often that a numismatic story breaks into the mainstream, but the abolition of the cent, finally fully effectuated on November 12, 2025 when the final one-cent coins came off the presses at the Philadelphia Mint, seems to have struck a nerve. Most major newspapers and online news sources have covered the end of the penny; The New York Times’ headline, styled as an obituary, declared “The Penny Dies at 232.” Pedantic numismatists (Read: nerds) will occasionally annoy the uninitiated by pointing out, correctly, that the penny is in fact a British denomination of, originally, 1/240th of a pound and that 1/100th of a dollar is properly a “cent.” One-cent United States coins were indeed introduced 232 years ago, inaugurating one of the most widely-collected series of coins in the world; the end of that series offers an opportunity to reflect on an American institution.

Efforts to eliminate the cent date back decades, and many an American numismatist has been asked by friends, family, or passersby for their thoughts on keeping that copper-plated zinc vestige of America’s monetary past.

This is hardly the first time the U.S. Treasury has eliminated a superfluous denomination. In 1873 two-cent pieces, silver three-cent pieces, and silver half dimes were eliminated along with, controversially, the silver dollar, while copper-nickel three-cent pieces, the gold dollar, and three-dollar gold coins were discontinued in 1889. Between 1875 and 1878 the U.S. Mint struck 20-cent pieces. Large denomination ($500 and up) paper notes haven’t been produced since the middle of the last century. Not all of these odd denominations (as collectors, dealers, and specialists call coins with strange denominations not in present use) received the media send-off of the cent, but the elimination of the cent is not entirely unprecedented.

An excellent film that lays out the merits of abolishing the cent -- or retaining it -- Heads Up: When Will We Stop Making Sense (2019), is highly recommended watching for any reader interested in the economics of the cent. Interviews with policymakers, numismatists, and economists place the issue in helpful context and allow for a discussion more complex than simply noting the cost of manufacturing cents.

The cent’s history could be the jumping-off point for any number of interesting digressions into American history. Portland, Oregon got its name as the result of a coin flip using a cent (specifically an 1835 Large cent). Hoarding of cents during the Civil War prompted such widespread issuance of bronze token replacements produced by private citizens and businesses that the Treasury actually changed the cent’s composition in 1864. FDR once joked that he was arrested for trying to use a 1943 zinc-coated steel cent (an alloy introduced to save copper for the war effort) as a dime in a phone booth. Copper was almost entirely removed from the cent in 1982, and the transition year saw seven distinct types of cents issued, with two different compositions, two different mint marks, and two different date sizes.

The abolition of another unnecessary denomination proved to be a seminal event in the history of American coin collecting: the abolition of the half cent in 1857. The half cent -- or “Little Half Sisters” as some specialists fondly call them -- was abolished by the Coinage Act of 1857 for reasons likely familiar to present-day observers of its larger sibling’s demise: it lacked purchasing power, was unpopular with the public (as early as 1836, hundreds of thousands of unissued half cents sat in government vaults) and cost more to produce than its face value -- the latter a concept referred to by economists as “negative seignorage.” The size and composition of the cent dramatically changed with the same reform that swept the half-cent away and, taken together, these twin developments helped to catalyze American coin collecting. Consumers held onto their half cents and large cents, paying more attention than they otherwise might have to their coinage. This was one factor among several that whet a collector appetite for colonial coins, tokens and medals depicting Washington, and other numismatic Americana dating to or referencing the founding, which found a receptive market in the late 1850s.