A Eulogy for The Penny

Yesterday, the Penny died. Today, we eulogize her.

Yesterday the Penny died, and I’ll be honest with you.

I forgot she existed.

At her end, the Penny was doing the monetary equivalent of regional dinner theater.

Showing up in gas station transactions nobody wants to wait through, making rare appearances on street corners, and popping up in dusty tip jars while we whipped out our ApplePay to grab a $9 latte without a second glance.

Yesterday, the U.S. Mint announced they’re officially discontinuing the Penny’s production.

In Hollywood terms, they’re not renewing her contract.

After 232 years of loyal service, the Penny will receive no farewell tour. No lifetime achievement award. No biopic.

She faded (much like our democracy over the last 12 months) not with a bang, but a whimper.

The Penny’s Ingénue Years

When the Penny first arrived, she had instant reach.

You literally could not participate in the American economy without her.

She was one of the first coins authorized by the Coinage Act of 1792, back when we were a “proper country” that smelled like horse manure, gunpowder and slavery.

The Penny could buy things. Real things like a newspaper, a biscuit, or a postcard (remember those?)

For over a century, she maintained brand partnerships with candy stores, newsstands, general stores.

“A penny saved is a penny earned” wasn’t just financial advice, it was an iconic catchphrase, a viral philosophy that elevated her as a household name.

In 1909, she landed her biggest collab to-date: Abraham Lincoln’s face. His face on her profile. Her image in every pocket in America. It was the ultimate influencer partnership: dead icon meets living currency.

She had engagement metrics that today’s creators would murder for, and she did it without an algorithm, without trending audio, and without a Ring light.

She was the original it-girl of American commerce.

Yes She Can

Here’s what made the Penny’s career different: she had utility.

You needed her.

Not in a parasocial “I feel like I know her” way, but in a “I literally cannot buy this newspaper without her” way. She made transactions possible.

We mourn the good old days when the Penny passed through every hand in America.

She circulated through pockets and cash registers during the Great Depression, through the World Wars, the Civil Rights Movement, and 9/11 (where she saw it all from ground zero, because that’s where we left her).

And then, she became invisible the way all talent secretly fears… not through scandal or failure, but through the indifferent passage of time.

Copper-Bottomed Rock Bottom

But by the 2000s, the Penny couldn’t get work. Well, not real work. So what happened? Where was her “Britney” moment? Why did she fall off?

Vending machines started rejecting her.

Parking meters refused her.

Even laundromats (those last bastions of coin employment) wanted nothing to do with her.

Still, the Penny kept showing up. Because what else do you do, when performing is all you’ve ever known?

“Take-a-penny-leave-a-penny trays” became her nursing home. Mostly, she just sat there, a has-been in a has-been dish.

Then, we hollowed her out. In 1982, we gave her a facelift and 95% of her copper was replaced with zinc, keeping just enough to maintain the appearance of her former legacy.

Adding insult to her injury, we built Coinstar machines dedicated to grinding her down for parts, making a 12% profit off the privilege of destroying her en masse.

Still, the Penny lives on. There are 250 billion of her stuffed into couch cushions, hidden in junk drawers, hiding in the glove compartments of your grandparents’ Volkswagens.

You can even catch her entombed forever in the resin-poured floors at Planet Hollywood.

She’s everywhere and nowhere, present but totally irrelevant, all around us, but invisible.

Now What?

The Penny’s long, bumpy and ultimately tragic career has something uncomfortable to teach us about how America treats its icons.

You can do everything right, and still become obsolete.

You can have unprecedented reach, and still lose it to forces beyond your control.

The Penny is survived by:

• The Nickel and Dime (counting their days)

• The Quarter (still squeezing residuals from parking meters and laundromats)

• And The Dollar Coin (Sacagawea patiently awaits the release of the Epstein Files)

In death, she will join a landfill of paper maps, floppy disks, pagers, CDs, Blu-Rays and pretty soon, the 3 branches of US government.

Farewell, Penny.

I hope we see you in the Oscars in-memoriam next year.