The American penny has died at 232 following a long bout of high manufacturing cost and uselessness.
The Treasury Department officially announced plans to end production of the penny back in May, and the final penny was minted last Wednesday at the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, overseen by U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach.
These final few pennies will actually not be released into circulation, rather will be put up for auction. According to CNN, the last pennies to actually enter the marketplace were minted in June.
Coin experts estimate the auction for the final pennies could net $2 million to $5 million apiece.
"Collectors would go nuts for a modern rarity of business-strike Lincoln cents," John Feigenbaum, publisher of rare coin price guide Greysheet, told USA Today.
And while the final penny has been minted, they will still be legal tender for years to come. With more than 300 billion pennies in circulation, we will likely not see an end to that for a long, long time.
"Retailers won’t necessarily run out of them for a while," Jeff Lenard, spokesperson for the National Association of Convenience Stores, told CNN. "But eventually stores won’t be able to get new rolls of pennies from their banks and will start rounding transactions up or down to the nearest nickel. The decision when to do that will rest with each retailer, not official government policy."
In addition to being rarely used now, the each individual penny also cost nearly four cents to produce.
Currently, the most expensive penny in the world is the 1943-D Lincoln Bronze Cent, which sold for $1.7 million in 2010. Its astronomical price is due to a manufacturing error, where bronze was used instead of copper. Early estimates for the prices for these final few pennies overwhelmingly exceed the $1.7 million.
Matt Liberman is a reporter and video producer for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture.
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