The U.S. penny is a coin worth 1 cent, but it costs more than 1.6 cents to mint. Canada plans to abolish the penny sometime this year, and my guess is the U.S. will eventually follow. That will be a sad day for me, but I understand the logic behind it. The reality is that it costs more than a cent to produce a penny, and that’s just one of many financial drawbacks to the general use of pennies. So, in the spirit of historical trivia, here I present a few interesting facts about the penny. 1. The word “penny” was introduced around 790 A.D. by King Offa, the English Emperor who ruled Mercia from 757 to 796. The word penny referred to an English coin made entirely of silver.
2. The word “penny” was originally used to describe any sort of coin, not just the small denomination that is known for today.
3. When the U.S. started producing pennies in the 18th century, the official name given to the coin was the “one-cent-piece”. The term didn’t stick, and we continued using the British term “penny”.
4. The first American penny was designed by Benjamin Franklin. On one side the words “Mind Your Business” are set below a sun and sundial; on the other side “We Are One” is encircled by a 13 link chain representing the original colonies.
5. The modern day phrase “a penny saved is a penny earned” is attributed to Benjamin Franklin. The origin can be traced to the Welsh-born English poet George Herbert; in a circa 1633 publication of proverbs, Herbert writes “a penny spar’d is twice got.”
6. The first Lincoln penny was issued in 1909 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s birth. It’s the first time a U.S. coin bears a picture of a President.
7. The original penny was completely made of copper. That amount has decreased significantly since the rise in price of this red metal, and today’s pennies are made up of only 2.5% copper - the other 97.5% is Zinc.
8. During World War II, copper reserves were saved for military use, prompting the production of zinc plated steel pennies in 1943. The “steel penny” was also often referred to as the “wartime penny”
9. U.S. military bases overseas stopped handling pennies in the early 1980s, and all transactions are automatically rounded up or down to the nearest five cents.
10. There are about 150 billion U.S. pennies circulating around the world today.
I have a few of those pennies in a tin jar at home, and I have no intentions of parting with any of them any time soon.
