The Last Penny
Endings and goodbyes are challenging. As someone struggling with the end of my teaching career I feel this profoundly. Is this why the news of the minting of the last penny hits so hard? Is it nostalgia? Or something else?
I’ve been thinking about the penny ever since I heard that the last penny was minted on Nov. 12, 2025. Like many I have a real love-hate relationship with the penny. I am old enough to remember using the penny for something other than making change, but also reading arguments for canceling the penny have been a part of my entire teaching career. Currently there is a cup of pennies on my desk because of course. But it took a recent What Next podcast episode (Who Killed the Penny? She Did.) to help me unlock some of my feelings.
Trigger warning: politics. I wish I could believe that the Trump administration made this decision for all the purely practical reasons my former students argued over the years (with the support of many expert sources), but I can’t help thinking this is just another destructive flex. This move was made in typical Trump slapdash fashion with none of the care and planning displayed when the Canadian government phased out its penny in the 2010s. We can already see signs (both literal and figurative) of this lack of foresight and attention to detail at cash registers across the country. I’ve always sympathized with the Trump voters who cast that ballot because he promised to break things. We all know there are many things in politics and government that need to be broken. But once again countless minimum wage workers staffing cash registers, small business owners, and the Americans who need to count their pennies are the ones being hurt while major corporations will benefit (by rounding up or raking in digital transaction fees).
So this week I invite you to write about the penny. What are your favorite penny memories? (Pennies on the train tracks, penny candy, Columbia House) What are your favorite penny sayings? What are your favorite penny poems:
- Brown Penny by William Butler Yeats
- lucky penny poems
- 10 Short & Funny Poems About Pennies
What are your thoughts and feelings about the last penny?
Art: U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach holds one of the last pennies pressed at the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
