When are 696 pennies worth $16,744,500?
When they’re the last pennies ever produced by the U.S. Mint, and they go to auction at Stacks & Bowers.
Billed as the last circulating cents, the final omega pennies were sold in 232 lots Thursday, each containing three pennies, one of which was a 24-carat gold cent piece.
The final lot, which represented "the VERY LAST cents struck in the classic circulating finish," was the most expensive of the batch, fetching $800,000.
The first lot sold for $200,000, and a total of 17 lots topped the $100,000 mark.
Bidding started on each three-coin lot at $3,500, and the lowest-priced lot sold for $48,000.
The Treasury Department officially announced plans to end production of the penny back in May, and the final penny was minted last month at the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, overseen by U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach.
The final pennies minted were put into Thursday's auction, which Stacks & Bowers conducted on behalf of the U.S. Mint. According to CNN, the last pennies to actually enter the marketplace were minted in June.
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, each individual penny also cost nearly four cents to produce.
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