Did you know that the U.S. Mint no longer makes pennies?
After more than two centuries in circulation, the penny is getting retired. In May, the U.S. Treasury Department placed its final order for penny blanks, which are the flat metal discs the U.S. Mint transforms into coins. These remaining blanks are expected to run out by early 2026, at which point production of new pennies will officially cease. So what do you think about that? What are we to do with those piggy banks and water jugs full of pennies we’ve been collecting for years?
February’s Sage Challenge was: Write up to 800 words in any genre that centers around a penny.
Authors Story Title
- Mark Fleisher Common Cents
- Dita Dow Centimental Journey
- C.L. Nemeth One Penny, Two Penny, Three Penny, Four…
- Thelma Giomi Planted in Pennies
- Larry Kilham A Penny Saved
- Elaine Montague Penny 2026
- Sam Moorman Junior Fashion
Common Cents
Mark Fleisher
Random thoughts about the gradual demise of the penny —
* Thoughts will cost more. A nickel for your thoughts? Doesn’t sound quite right, does it?
* Folks who keep a sharp eye on their spending will no longer be able to pinch pennies. That fact, I caution, should not encourage unwise spending sprees.
* American tourists in Italy may still toss three coins into the Trevi Fountain in Rome. But none of those coins will be a penny.
* If we want a glimpse of Abraham Lincoln we will need to pull out a five-dollar bill.
* Officials from the United States Mint are rumored to be burning sheet music and recordings of the song “Pennies from Heaven.”
* Memories of kids pitching pennies against a brick wall will be banned.
* How will I know if it’s going to be a good day?
Gonna be a better day,
a good day, a lucky day
for I found a shiny penny
with Old Abe looking up
at the blue sky from down
on the supermarket parking lot
* This has nothing to do with the penny. I expect there will be action taken on the reverse side of the twenty-dollar bill. Why? Pictured is The White House – with the East Wing intact. Need I say more?
Centimental Journey
Dita Dow
It’s happening: the penny is going away. The humble copper-ish disk that has lived at the bottom of our pockets, cup holders, and dryer lint traps is finally packing its bags. And I’ll admit it, I’m taking it personally.
Not because I love pennies. I don’t. Pennies are the money equivalent of receiving a single raisin on Halloween. They’re rarely useful, frequently sticky, and always found in places that suggest you should clean more often. But pennies are symbolic.
What happens to all our penny sayings now? We’ve built an entire moral and spiritual belief system around this coin. Removing it feels like ripping a foundational scripture out of the Book of Wisdom and replacing it with a QR code.
Take the classic: “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
A deeply motivational phrase. It’s the anthem of the frugal. It’s the official slogan of people who wash Ziploc bags.
But if the penny disappears, what do we say?
“A nickel saved is a nickel earned” doesn’t hit the same. And “a dollar saved is a dollar earned” is just… budgeting.
The penny gave us permission to feel responsible for doing basically nothing. You didn’t need to invest. You didn’t need a financial advisor. You just needed to avoid spending one cent.
Then there’s “A penny for your thoughts.” This is one of my favorites because it implies that your thoughts—the miraculous inner workings of your consciousness—are worth one cent.
What an incredible insult wrapped in politeness. It’s like saying, “Hello, I’d like to rent access to your brain for the price of used gum.”
Now that the penny’s gone, we’ll have to update it.
“A nickel for your thoughts” implies a thoughtful person. Too generous.
“A quarter for your thoughts” implies your thoughts are premium content with ads.
Then comes the one that makes pennies seem magical: “Pennies from heaven.”
This suggests that when the universe blesses you, it does so not with peace, love, or meaningful stability, but with a few cents of sidewalk luck.
Still, it’s poetic. It implies abundance, serendipity, a celestial slot machine gently sprinkling spare change on your destiny.
But when pennies go away, what will heaven send?
“Nickels from heaven” feels aggressive.
“Direct deposits from heaven” feels like an accounting nightmare.
“Apple Pay from heaven” feels like a dystopian hymn sung by robots.
Which brings us to the financial cornerstone: “Take care of the pennies and the pounds (dollars) will take care of themselves.”
This is the idea that you can become wealthy by obsessively refusing small pleasures until your soul is a dry sponge and your bank account is… slightly improved.
But without pennies, does the advice vanish too?
Will we all become reckless spendthrifts, sprinting into grocery stores screaming, “NO MORE PENNIES? FANTASTIC. I’LL BUY THE PRE-CUT FRUIT. I’M PAYING FOR LAZINESS BECAUSE LIFE HAS NO MEANING.”
Pennies are how we practiced restraint. Pennies trained us. Pennies were the training wheels of guilt. The second you wanted something fun, a penny appeared like a tiny copper judge: Do you really need this?
This is also where “pinch pennies” comes in, which will be harder to say with a straight face once pennies are gone. “Pinch nickels” just sounds like a weird little compulsion.
And then we arrive at the sacred penny superstitions, the ones that turn sidewalks into emotional obstacle courses.
“Find a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck.”
This has caused millions of Americans to stop walking, bend over with a little grunt, retrieve one cent, and feel strangely proud—as if they just foraged successfully.
But the companion curse is even stronger:
“See a penny, let it lie, and your luck will pass you by.”
This is horrifying. It means every ignored penny is a luck landmine. Somewhere out there, you didn’t pick up a penny in 2006 and that’s why your phone battery dies faster now.
Without pennies, what will we do?
Will children have to chant, “Find a nickel, pick it up, all day long you’ll have… moderate luck”?
Will we start finding dimes and thinking, “Oh no. That’s too much responsibility.”
So yes, maybe getting rid of the penny is practical. Maybe it saves money. Maybe it reduces waste. Maybe it ends the tyranny of the 99-cent pricing scheme.
But what it really removes is a tiny shared ritual. A little copper reminder that even the smallest thing could matter—financially, symbolically, spiritually, or at least in terms of how smug you feel when you drop it into a jar labeled “ITALY TRIP.”
Because if the penny goes away, then what?
A penny saved is a penny earned. But no pennies means the entire idiom workforce is getting laid off.
One Penny, Two Penny, Three Penny, Four
C.L. Nemeth
Four young men were gathered in a local pub and were enjoying a cold beer with much laughter, ribbing, and just good friendship. The four had met in the lower grades in school, were together through high school. Two even went to the same college. Two years ago, the first three married and had chosen brides from among their schoolmates. All three now had a child with Rob expecting a second.
Bruce had married some three months ago and was the butt of much ribbing and ribald merriment. Without fail the matter of sex would come up, with Bruce being teased about being the late comer. Today was no different .
Kirby, as usual, started it all off. “Bruce, you look a little haggard around the edges. Your marital duties are not getting you down, are they?”
Before Bruce could reply Keith, with a laugh, said, “Yeah, you look tired. I’m thinking, you need to give Marcy a little rest. There’s always tomorrow you know.”
Rob almost spit out a mouthful of beer, then said, “Maybe this little guy is too small for the job. Marcy may be looking for more horsepower than Bruce can generate.”
Kevin added. “Yeah, Bruce, you have to pace yourself.
Bruce endured the ribbing with a shy smile. He knew better than to defend himself, the three would be all over him without mercy.
Keith again, “It’s been, what? Three months? The shine should be coming off the apple by now.”
They continued the harassment with much laughing and good nature. As the noise quieted Keith said “I have an uncle, my dad’s younger brother. One day something came up about, you know, how often and he told me about a friend…”
All were now listening closely. Keith went on, “It seems this man got a two-quart Mason jar. He put it on the dresser in the bedroom. Every time he and his wife had sex he put a penny in the jar. This went on for a year. Then every time they did it he took a penny out of the jar. It took them two and a half years to empty the mason jar.”
All began laughing and trying to talk. The ribbing continued until finally, Rob stood. “Got to get on home, guys. You know how it is,” he said with a grin. The other three also stood, and after some more jokes at Bruce’s expense, they all headed for home.
Marcy greeted him warmly, they ate, and Bruce helped with the dishes. Soon they were in the family room, watching a game show. After about twenty minutes Bruce began to chuckle. Marcy looked at him, their eyes met, and Bruce broke out laughing.
“What in the world?” Said Marcy with a smile.
Bruce still laughing, wiped his eyes. “The guys were ribbing me about, about, well, about our sex life. I’m sure you know this goes on from time to time?”
Marcy sat up straight, “I hope you didn’t them anything about us.” She said with a frown.
“No, of course not. But that doesn’t stop them from riding me.”
“Well,” said Marcy, “I guess you men have to do that sort of thing, from time to time,” she said , her disapproval showing.
Bruce said, “You know, I’m been thinking…I may I have an idea that’ll show them up.”
“Oh?” said Marcy, “What are you thinking?”
He began to tell her about Keith’s uncle and his wife. When he explained the Mason jar and the pennies going in, and then coming out, she began laughing and planning with Bruce.
Several weeks later Marcy and Bruce hosted a family cookout. As the evening wore on Marcy told the other women to put their kids to bed on the large bed in the master bedroom. Marcy then alerted Bruce and they eagerly waited.
Soon a whoop erupted from the bedroom, along with loud laughter. Marcy and the men hurried to the room.
In the corner of the room, on the floor, stood a large Mason jar. It was filled to overflowing with pennies. Pennies were lying on the floor all around the jar. On the dresser sat an ash tray holding a full roll of pennies and a broken roll.
The noise was loud and long. After more laughter the eight retired to the patio, where the noise continued for some time.
After things had quieted, Kirby stood and raised a glass. “Friends, I give you Marcy, and Bruce. They have to be the best acceptors of ribbing that I’ve ever met. Here’s to the Champions.”
The patio erupted with clapping, shouts, whistles, and lots of laughter.
Planted in Pennies
Thelma A. Giomi
Find a penny, pick it up, all day you’ll have good luck. Seeing a penny and picking it up has always been an enchanting surprise for me. My sister would tease me that no one else would notice a penny on the sidewalk or bother to pick it up. She would chide me about the “good luck” superstition. I would laugh and say, “Little things can change your day if you let them”.
Does anyone pick up a penny anymore? Most of us have probably dismissed a copper glint on the sidewalk as unworthy of our effort. Now, the magic of random occurrences, finding a penny in a crack of the sidewalk, could be lost forever. Now that we will no longer have any use for it? Can that magic be transferred to a nickel, a dime, or a quarter?
These random occurrences, while surprising, remain our choice whether to delight in them. Scientists use a ‘search image’ in their work. It is about the critical event or object they focus on. So, if they were intent on finding a certain species of monkey in a jungle, they might miss the snake in the tree entirely.
Finding a penny, or the single right word for a description or poem, does it really matter? Annie Dillard writes in her Pulitzer Prize-winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek about how, as a child, she used to hide a penny on a sidewalk near her home. She wouldn’t wait to see who picked it up and would forget about it until once again she was “gripped by the impulse to hide another penny”. Her need to hide a penny and perhaps provide the surprise and joy that might alter a stranger’s day is charming and full of innocent spirit. I wonder whether there are others out there, anonymously planting pennies. What will they do now to charm someone’s day secretly? A nickel, a dime, a quarter?
These days, there can be a tumble of confusion and chaos around us. They can be mind-numbing and spirit-numbing. To survive, we may become insensitive to the turmoil and disruptions around us, to losses and grief over so many missing parts of our old lives. For some, it turns to anger; for others, to despair; and still others are energized to create new projects and to reconnect with what community means.
In this moment, when we are unable to control all the aspects of life that have changed and will continue to change, we are given the opportunity to put ourselves in the path of light. To decide how we will celebrate our days. If we cannot look forward to finding a penny to lighten our days, we can instead instill them with new search images. There are all kinds of ways to make a day that is worth living. Worth our precious minutes and hours. Whether we are hiding a penny for someone else to find or leaving our mind and heart open to what may surprise us and change the essence of the day, the world may no longer be planted in pennies. Still, there is enchantment waiting in new and mysterious ways if we remain open. What you see is what you get.
A penny saved
is a penny earned,”
but what if it
is a penny spurned?
*
Larry Kilham
Goodbye, Mr. Penny
Elaine Montague
An old friend retired recently, one that I relied on since childhood. My daddy and mama taught me to treasure our friendship because it was valuable. As I became more elderly, I liked paying with exact change. That made the penny even more necessary. Its demise drains my ability to be exact.
“Do you want the change?” asks a teller when I cash a check. Of course, I do.
At the age of four, I learned the hard way that taking another’s pennies was stealing, even if it was only two cents. Mama made me take them back and apologize to the lady from whose home I had purloined them. I was ashamed.
I read about an extraordinarily rich gentleman who never overlooked a penny lying on the ground.
“Why do you pick those up?” someone asked.
“Because they are valuable. They say, ‘In God we trust,’” he said.
From the 1780s to November of 2025, the United States produced pennies. When their copper content became more valuable than one cent, composition changed until it was no longer efficient to make them. My friend became a dinosaur!
I was surprised to meet a woman who was afraid of pennies because she did not like to touch small objects. I loved cradling them from hand to hand and feeling their coolness against my skin. New pennies were shiny and gleamed with a copper glow. I could pretend they would accumulate and bring the world. Mr. Abraham Lincoln sat in profile looking quite presidential. He had a stern jaw that attested to a strong spirit.
Our first penny, named after the British penny, sported a woman with flowing hair. She stood for liberty, a word that has been on every U. S. penny from the beginning. After the woman came a flying eagle, then Abe. The U. S. Mint in Washington, D.C., was interesting to visit, but I was not a numismatist enough to recall the lady with various hair styles and caps or the eagle or obverse designs. I owned one with an Indian chief with headdress. It would have been minted between 1859 and 1909, when Mr. Lincoln’s portrait joined the gallery.
I shall miss dear Abe.
For years, I spread pennies on a table and felt their surfaces. I ran my hands through them as if fingerpainting. With a bit of tracing paper on top and a soft lead pencil, I tried to pull forth the profile. The coins slid easily on the table as I stacked them into groups of ten, which meant I had a dime. I spilled the stacks into paper cylinders and felt how much fifty cents weighed as I tightly tucked the paper ends. Sometimes, there were enough coins in the collection jar that I packed away five or six tubes of counted change. Each penny showed the year and city in which it was struck. Sometimes, I labeled the tubes with minting dates. By grouping pennies, I learned the power of ten and how a dime was smaller but more valuable than a nickel. Fifty cents certainly looked and felt different from a half dollar coin but purchased the same things.
My five-year-old brother received an allowance of five cents each week. Daddy carefully helped him count with his fingers: one cent for Sunday School, two cents for savings, and two cents to spend. When he picked dandelions for extra money, stems had to be more than a certain length, and ten were worth a penny. They measured meticulously with a ruler.
Yes, the coin was important and valuable. Five bought candy or gum with a trading card. Twice that number gave me a movie or popcorn. Three times that would get a comic book.
I miss Mr. Lincoln, the familiar smoothness as my fingers rummaged in pocket or purse, the clinking as I laid them on a counter. Goodbye, Friend Penny. I shall treasure your messages of liberty and trust in God, your precision when paying, and your faithfulness during the years.
Junior Fashion
Sam Moorman
In preteen years my brother and I dressed smartly for grade school, from top to toe. We were influenced by the look of Elvis Presley, who dominated song charts in those 1950s. We kept caps off to show our trendy hairdo, a basic flattop one-half inch long. But this was flanked by very long side waves which we bleached with peroxide. The side hair was lubed stiff with Vaseline and combed past ears to the back of our heads. Both greased sides joined there in a classic “d.a.”, which was the polite term for duck’s ass, or the way a duck’s feathers bunch at its rear.
At ages ten and twelve we had no facial hair, but lifted the back of shirt collars like Elvis. We were military kids whose parents who were too busy to correct our dress or simply didn’t care that we went to school looking like little gangsters.
Our blue jeans were slung low so we appeared to have long torsos and short legs.
We clipped a thin chain at the belt and looped it down one leg, from waist to knee, then back up to disappear inside a front jeans’ pocket where it attached to a hidden folding knife. Some kids carried a button-operated switchblade or drop knife, but these were banned on the Army base. Boys twirled the knife on its chain end during casual moments.
That chain was unique to where we lived–in occupied West Germany after America’s victory in World War II. Some German bathrooms had two-part toilets, with the water tank attached to a wall five feet above the bowl. This increased flushing pressure, but needed a long pull-chain to activate the tank valve and release water. You could buy a length of that chain in stores, but sometimes it was taken from a public bathroom and flaunted as token plunder from hostile territory.
Though the big war was over, we army brats had rock fights with roving bands of German kids who lived in a DP Camp. That was an area of tin shacks that housed Displaced Persons whose homes and families were lost in war bombing. Our military tried to locate relatives who would take in these people. Meanwhile, one of those rock fights was a highlight of my life. I heard “zinnng” as a stone flew over my head so close it brushed flattop bristles.
My mom stayed busy with laundry, cooking, and keeping the frig stocked which wasn’t easy with two growing boys. After a school day my brother and I slathered butter on piece after piece of toast, then a layer of sugar to soak the butter, and a sprinkle of cinnamon. This demolished an entire loaf of Wonder Bread for a pre-dinner snack.
Kids wore high-top canvas sneakers during summertime. But for school we slipped on black dress shoes. I lined the sides of my shoe soles with bright white adhesive tape for extra flash. Instead of laces, those shoes had a double layer of front leather with a small slit that exactly fit a shiny coin. So they were called penny loafers.
