{"id":374441,"date":"2025-11-12T21:45:36","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T21:45:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/374441\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T21:45:36","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T21:45:36","slug":"8-things-to-know-about-the-penny-and-philadelphia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/374441\/","title":{"rendered":"8 things to know about the penny and Philadelphia"},"content":{"rendered":"

The penny was born in Philadelphia \u2014 and that\u2019s where it ends, too.<\/p>\n

The final one-cent piece was stamped Wednesday<\/a>, at the U.S. Mint on Philly\u2019s Independence Mall, with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Treasurer Brandon Beach in attendance for the final production run.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The move is part of President Trump\u2019s general cost-cutting since his return to office earlier this year. The president claims each penny costs about four cents to produce, that they are increasingly irrelevant due to inflation, and that the Treasury Department expects to save $56 million per year not making them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The penny has a long history in Philly. Here are (at least) eight things you should know about the coin and its place in history and the city.<\/p>\n

Philadelphia is the birthplace of the penny<\/p>\n

The penny was conceived with the Coinage Act of 1792. The U.S. Mint,\u00a0 located on Seventh Street between Arch and Filbert Streets, produced the nation\u2019s first batch of copper cents \u2014\u00a011,178 of them \u2014 in March 1793.\u200b Coin production relied on manual labor and horse power, making it slow and labor-intensive. It wasn\u2019t until 1836 that steam-powered coin presses revolutionized the process.<\/p>\n

The penny\u2019s evolving purchasing power<\/p>\n

It\u2019s always been worth one cent, but in 1793, that could buy you a biscuit or a candle.<\/p>\n

\"\"Early pennies, from 1811 and 1858, respectively.<\/p>\n

The first penny didn\u2019t have Lincoln\u2019s bust, duh<\/p>\n

The earliest Philadelphia pennies were large and made of nearly pure copper, featuring simple, symbolic designs representing liberty. Later ones had images of wheat.\u200b The iconic Lincoln cent \u2014 still America\u2019s penny \u2014 began production in Philadelphia in 1909. It was a major departure in that it depicted a person, something that was associated with monarchs. Afterward, American historical figures \u2014 mostly dead, with few exceptions \u2014 became the norm. The current president has floated the idea of \u201ca Trump coin.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Mint has moved quite a bit<\/p>\n

As Philadelphia and the nation grew, demand for coinage outpaced the original Mint\u2019s capabilities. The Mint moved to a larger, more modern building (designed by William Strickland) in 1833 at Juniper and Chestnut streets. It then moved to an even larger facility on Spring Garden in 1901, and landed at its current location on Independence Mall in 1969.<\/p>\n

\"\"David Rittenhouse (Wikipedia)<\/p>\n

The Mint\u2019s first director was a Philadelphian<\/p>\n

David Rittenhouse, a renowned scientist and Philadelphia native, was appointed as the Mint\u2019s first director, helping set the standards and practices for American coin production.<\/p>\n

Not all pennies have been made of copper<\/p>\n

During World War II, Philadelphia minted steel pennies in 1943 to save copper for the war effort, a unique moment in coin history.\u200b (If you have one in average condition today, the steel pennies would only be worth around 10 to 15 cents<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\u201cP\u201d can mark a penny as Philly made, but only for one year<\/p>\n

Philadelphia was the only U.S. Mint for nearly 50 years, until gold was discovered out west. U.S. Mints were then opened in San Francisco and Denver (and later, West Point, N.Y.). For over two centuries, Philadelphia-made pennies had no \u201cP\u201d mint mark, which is a one-letter designation to show where a coin was pressed (\u201cS\u201d is for San Francisco, \u201cD\u201d is for Denver, etc.). To celebrate the Mint\u2019s 225th anniversary in 2017, the \u201cP\u201d mint mark briefly appeared on cents for the first time.\u200b<\/p>\n

There are A LOT of pennies out there<\/p>\n

While production ends today, pennies will be with us for a long time. It\u2019s estimated that there are 130 billion pennies \u2014 more than 700 million pounds worth \u2014 in circulation, though many are in jars, drawers and under couches. And they\u2019ll always be worth something \u2014 pennies don\u2019t expire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The penny was born in Philadelphia \u2014 and that\u2019s where it ends, too. The final one-cent piece was…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":374442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,472,1448,180293,2830,1311,180294,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-374441","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-history","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennies","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-philadelphia","14":"tag-philadelphia-mint","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115538922514448044","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}