The penny never made much sense at the checkout line, but it sure made dollars at auction.
Coin collectors paid more than $16 million for a piece of American history after the U.S. government ended penny production in November, the Associated Press reported.
The phaseout of penny production has come as a cost-cutting measure, following President Donald Trump’s February call to “rip the waste out of our great [nation’s] budget, even if it’s a penny at a time.”
The U.S. Mint sold 232 sets, each containing three pennies, for $16.76 million at an auction last Thursday hosted by Stack’s Bowers Galleries.
The final set, containing the last three pennies ever made, sold for $800,000. That bidder also received the three dies that struck those Lincoln cents.
According to the outlet, each set included one penny struck at the Philadelphia Mint, one from the Denver Mint and one 24-karat gold penny.
Each cent bore a unique Omega symbol signifying each coin is the last of the circulating pennies ever struck by the mint. The number of sets reflected the 232 years the coin had been part of American culture since its introduction in 1793.
John Kraljevich, director of Numismatic Americana at Stack’s Bowers, said the auction was unprecedented.
“I’ve been going to coin auctions for 40 years, and I can tell you, I’ve never seen anything like this, because there’s never been anything like this,” Kraljevich said.
Stack’s Bowers President Brian Kendrella said the coins resonated with the public in an unusual way.
“They captured the public imagination like few rare coins we’ve ever handled,” Kendrella said.
Kraljevich said the end of penny production struck a nostalgic chord.
“American culture has incorporated the penny into our lexicon, into our pop culture, into all of this stuff,” Kraljevich said. “And I think for a lot of people, the ending of production of cents for circulation is an item of nostalgia.”