NOVEMBER 12
2025•Final U.S. Cent for Circulation Struck
2009•Lincoln Bicentennial Cent: Presidency Reverse
The Final U.S. Cent for Circulation Is Struck in Philadelphia
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On November 12, 2025, United States Treasurer Brandon Beach activated a coining press at the Philadelphia Mint and struck the final one-cent coin intended for circulation, officially ending a 232-year run of circulating-cent production in the United States. It was an extraordinary ending for the smallest denomination in American coinage—a coin whose history stretched from the large copper Chain cents of 1793 to the tiny copper-plated zinc Lincoln cents of the twenty-first century.
The cent did not cease to be money that day. Existing pennies remained legal tender, and the United States Mint said it would continue producing limited numismatic versions for collectors. But the government would no longer manufacture new cents to replenish everyday commerce. After more than two centuries, the circulating production line had stopped.
The event was driven largely by economics. According to the Mint, the cost of producing a single cent had climbed to 3.69 cents. With an estimated 300 billion pennies already in circulation, Treasury concluded that continuing to manufacture enormous quantities of new one-cent coins was no longer necessary.
For numismatists, November 12, 2025 was not merely an accounting decision. It was the end of one of the longest chapters in United States coinage history.
The Cent Was There Almost from the Beginning
Congress authorized the cent in the Coinage Act of 1792, the foundational law that established the United States Mint and the federal coinage system.
The first federal cents were struck in Philadelphia in 1793.
Those coins would look astonishing beside a modern Lincoln cent. The original cent was a large copper coin approximately the size of a modern half dollar. Its value was substantial enough to matter in ordinary transactions at a time when a cent possessed far greater purchasing power than it would two centuries later.
The first design, known today as the Chain cent, depicted Liberty with flowing hair on the obverse and a chain of links on the reverse.
From that beginning, the cent became one of the most persistent denominations in American money.
From Large Cent to Small Cent
For more than six decades, U.S. cents were large copper coins.
The designs changed repeatedly—Flowing Hair, Liberty Cap, Draped Bust, Classic Head, Coronet or Matron Head, and Braided Hair—but the basic concept remained a substantial copper piece.
By the 1850s, rising copper prices and changing economic conditions made the large cent increasingly impractical.
In 1857, the Mint introduced the smaller Flying Eagle cent. The diameter dropped dramatically, and the composition became copper-nickel.
That transition created the basic physical scale Americans still associate with the penny.
The Indian Head cent followed in 1859 and remained in production for half a century.
The cent underwent its most famous transformation in 1909, the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth.
Sculptor Victor David Brenner created the portrait of Lincoln for the obverse. With its introduction, Lincoln became the first actual U.S. president depicted on a regular-issue American coin.
The reverse featured two wheat ears framing the denomination and national inscriptions, giving rise to the familiar name “Wheat cent” or “Wheat penny.”
Brenner’s Lincoln portrait proved remarkably durable.
It remained on the obverse through every later reverse redesign and was still present when circulating-cent production ended in 2025—116 years after its debut.
In 1959, the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, the Mint replaced the wheat reverse with Frank Gasparro’s depiction of the Lincoln Memorial.
The Memorial cent became one of the most familiar coins in American history. Billions upon billions were struck during its fifty-year run.
A tiny representation of Daniel Chester French’s seated Lincoln statue can be seen between the Memorial’s columns, creating the unusual situation in which the same person appears twice on one coin: Brenner’s Lincoln on the obverse and the statue of Lincoln on the reverse.
The design remained through 2008.
2009: Four Designs for Lincoln’s Bicentennial
The Mint celebrated the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth and the centennial of the Lincoln cent in 2009 with four different reverse designs.
Each represented a phase of Lincoln’s life: his birth and early childhood in Kentucky, formative years in Indiana, professional life in Illinois, and presidency in Washington, D.C.
The four-coin program turned the humble cent into a miniature biography of Lincoln.
It also set up the final permanent circulating reverse.
Beginning in 2010, the reverse featured a Union shield designed by Lyndall Bass and sculpted by Joseph Menna.
The thirteen vertical stripes represent the states joined in one union, supporting the horizontal bar representing the federal government. A scroll across the shield carries the denomination “ONE CENT.”
The design symbolized Lincoln’s preservation of the United States as a single nation.
This Union Shield cent was the circulating design in production when the denomination reached its historic endpoint in 2025.
The cent’s appearance remained relatively stable for long periods, but its composition changed dramatically.
The early large cents were essentially copper. The small cent began in copper-nickel. Indian Head and early Lincoln cents eventually used a bronze composition dominated by copper.
During World War II, copper became strategically important. In 1943, the Mint struck cents from zinc-coated steel, creating one of the most visually distinctive one-year issues in American coinage.
The Mint returned to copper-based cents afterward, but rising metal prices again created pressure decades later.
Since 1982, circulating cents have been primarily zinc with a thin copper plating. The final regular design weighed 2.50 grams and contained 2.5 percent copper with the balance zinc.
By 2025, even that inexpensive composition cost far more to manufacture than the coin’s face value.
A Penny That Cost 3.69 Cents
The economic argument against continued cent production had been building for years.
The Mint reported that over the preceding decade the unit cost of manufacturing and distributing a cent rose from 1.42 cents to 3.69 cents.
That meant the government lost money every time it produced a new penny for circulation.
With production measured in billions of coins in many years, the gap between face value and production cost was not trivial.
The problem was compounded by behavior. Cents frequently leave active circulation. People place them in jars, drawers, cups, boxes, and collections rather than returning them efficiently to commerce.
That creates demand for replacement coins even though enormous quantities already exist.
Ending production did not mean pennies suddenly disappeared.
The Mint estimated that roughly 300 billion one-cent coins were already in circulation.
That number explains why the denomination could remain usable without constant new production.
Americans could continue spending cents. Banks could continue accepting them. Businesses could continue pricing goods in one-cent increments.
The November 12 event ended the manufacture of new circulating cents—not the legal-tender status of the hundreds of billions already produced.
The U.S. Mint’s public guidance made this distinction explicit.
The penny remained legal tender after circulating production was suspended.
The Secretary of the Treasury has authority under federal law to mint and issue one-cent coins in quantities deemed necessary to meet the needs of the United States. Treasury determined that additional circulating cents were no longer necessary.
Thus the 2025 decision did not instantly abolish the denomination from federal law or invalidate coins already in Americans’ possession.
For a historical account, “production ended” and “the penny ceased to be legal tender” are very different statements. Only the former occurred.
The final circulating strike took place at the Philadelphia Mint on November 12.
United States Treasurer Brandon Beach performed the ceremonial final strike. Acting Mint Director Kristie McNally described the event as a celebration of 232 years of penny manufacturing while emphasizing that the coin’s historical legacy would continue.
Philadelphia was an especially appropriate setting.
The first federal cents had been struck in Philadelphia in 1793. More than two centuries later, the same city hosted the ceremonial conclusion of circulating production.
The location turned the event into a near-perfect historical bookend.
An Important Correction to the Initial Announcement
The day also produced a small but important piece of documentary history.
An initial version of the Mint’s press release incorrectly identified Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as the official who performed the ceremonial strike. The Mint later issued a correction stating that United States Treasurer Brandon Beach performed it.
The corrected Mint record is the version that should be used when describing the event.
This is exactly the kind of detail that matters in a historical project built around precise dates and events.
The end of the cent also generated an unusual numismatic finale.
Special final cents were produced with a small Greek omega—Ω—privy mark, symbolizing the end.
The Mint ultimately arranged 232 special three-coin sets, one for each year represented in the cent’s production history. Each set contained a 2025 Philadelphia cent, a 2025-D Denver cent, and an extraordinary 2025 cent struck in 24-karat gold at Philadelphia.
The gold cent represented the first official U.S. cent struck in gold.
These were not ordinary pieces released into pocket change. They were created as historic numismatic objects connected to the end of circulating-cent production.
The special Omega sets demonstrate how quickly an everyday object can become a historical artifact when its production ends.
For generations, pennies were among the least valuable objects Americans routinely handled. They accumulated in containers because many people did not consider them worth spending individually.
Yet the last examples were immediately desirable because they represented an endpoint.
When the 232 Omega sets were auctioned in December 2025, collector demand was enormous. Stack’s Bowers reported total sales exceeding $16.76 million, with the final-numbered set bringing $800,000.
The contrast could hardly be greater: a denomination abandoned partly because one cent had become economically insignificant produced some extraordinarily valuable collectibles at the moment of its retirement.
The Cent and American Coin Collecting
No denomination has probably introduced more Americans to coin collecting than the cent.
Its low face value made it accessible to children. Wheat cents could be pulled from circulation at almost no financial risk. Lincoln folders invited collectors to fill spaces by date and mintmark.
Famous varieties and rarities added excitement: the 1909-S VDB, 1914-D, 1922 No D, 1931-S, 1943 bronze cent, 1944 steel cent, and 1955 doubled die became legendary targets.
Even common cents taught basic numismatic habits—checking dates, mintmarks, condition, varieties, and design changes.
The end of circulating production therefore touched not only commerce but the traditional entry point into the hobby itself.
The full span of the cent tells a compressed history of the United States Mint.
The 1793 Chain cent came from a young institution working with relatively primitive equipment in the first federal Mint building.
Later cents reflected steam power, improved presses, branch mints, wartime metal shortages, industrial mass production, modern plating technology, computerized die preparation, and twenty-first-century collector marketing.
The designs traced changing national symbolism as well: allegorical Liberty, the Flying Eagle, the Indian Head, Lincoln, wheat, the Memorial, biographical scenes, and finally the Union shield.
Few American objects were manufactured continuously enough to document so much technological and cultural change.
The Mint commemorated 232 years of penny manufacturing beginning with 1793.
Numismatic references note an important interruption: no cents dated 1815 were produced, largely because the War of 1812 disrupted the supply of copper planchets.
The 232 special Omega sets intentionally echoed the Mint’s stated 232-year production legacy.
That number became part of the symbolism of the final issue rather than merely an elapsed-calendar calculation.
Collector Cents Continue
Perhaps the most important qualification to the phrase “last penny” is that the Mint did not promise never to strike another cent.
Its November 12 statement specifically said numismatic versions would continue to be produced in limited quantities for historical and collector purposes.
So the final coin struck that day was the final circulating cent under the production policy—not necessarily the final one-cent coin the U.S. Mint would ever manufacture.
That distinction preserves a future for the denomination within numismatics even as its mass-production role in commerce ends.
The cent’s final chapter is unusual because the coins themselves may remain common for decades.
Ending production does not remove hundreds of billions of existing pieces. Cents can continue circulating, accumulating in collections, and returning to banks.
Young collectors born after the final circulating strike may still encounter 2025 and earlier Lincoln cents throughout their lives.
In that sense, the penny did not vanish on November 12. Its manufacturing era ended while its circulation history continued.
November 12, 2025 is one of the clearest dividing lines in the history of United States coinage.
The cent was authorized with the nation’s original federal coinage system. It survived changes in size, metal, technology, design, and purchasing power. It carried Liberty for more than a century and Abraham Lincoln for another 116 years.
It survived wars, depressions, inflation, metal shortages, and the transition from a cash-centered economy toward electronic payments.
What finally ended its mass production was not a shortage of history but a surplus of coins and a simple economic problem: manufacturing a one-cent piece cost several times what the coin was worth.
At the Philadelphia Mint, where federal cent production had begun in 1793, Treasurer Brandon Beach activated the press for the ceremonial final circulating strike.
The cent remained legal tender. Hundreds of billions remained in American hands. Collector versions could continue.
But after 232 years, the United States stopped making new pennies for everyday circulation.
One of the longest-running stories in American money had reached its omega.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
2009 — Lincoln Bicentennial Cent: Presidency Reverse — The fourth and final 2009 Lincoln Bicentennial cent reverse entered release through the Federal Reserve and Mint rolls.