The penny is discontinued: what happens to your pennies, and are any worth keeping?

The United States stopped striking the cent for everyday change. The pennies already in drawers did not lose their face value. This note sticks to what the Treasury Department, the U.S. Mint, and the Federal Reserve have published about that stop, then points at the Lincoln dates worth a second look. It does not price your jar.

Production stopped. The coins did not.

On November 12, 2025, at the Philadelphia Mint, Treasurer Brandon Beach struck what the Mint called the final circulating one-cent coin. The Mint's release that day calls the ceremony the official end of a 232-year run of the penny as a circulating coin. Acting Mint Director Kristie McNally said general production concluded that day. The same release says the cent remains legal tender, estimates 300 billion pennies still out, and says businesses can keep pricing goods in one-cent steps. Collector versions continue in limited quantities.

The Mint says each penny's production cost rose from 1.42 cents to 3.69 cents over the prior decade. Its penny FAQ, current as of January 7, 2026, expects about $56 million a year in production savings and says the Secretary suspended circulating cents because new ones were no longer needed. Treasury's December 23, 2025 FAQ names the same $56 million figure for material costs. Treasury cites the Secretary's existing authority in 31 U.S.C. §§ 5111(a)(1) and 5112(a)(6). It also says manufacturing has stopped, and it asks people to spend the cents they already hold so retailers have time to adjust.

Those two agencies print different counts of pennies still around. The Mint's November 12 release says an estimated 300 billion. Treasury's FAQ says the Federal Reserve will keep recirculating roughly 114 billion. This page will not blend those figures into a third number.

A Congressional Research Service FAQ dated June 24, 2025, written before the November strike, already separated two ideas: ending production, and pulling coins out of people's hands. CRS notes that dropping a denomination from new production does not by itself take existing pieces out of use. It points to 2011, when the Secretary halted circulating dollar coins while the dollar stayed authorized and collector dollars went on. The bill table in that FAQ runs through June 13, 2025. Treat it as a snapshot, not a live vote count.

You can still spend them

The Mint's penny FAQ says the cent remains legal tender and may still be used for transactions. Treasury says it keeps its full face value indefinitely and its status as legal tender in perpetuity. Spending them is allowed at businesses that choose to take them. Treasury's guidance also says retailers should keep accepting cents and making penny change while the coins are still in use. That is guidance on the FAQ page. This note will not turn it into a rule about what a clerk must do. If a store turns a handful away, the coin has not been canceled. You still have a one-cent piece.

Rounding is a cash-register question

Treasury's FAQ opens by calling its recommendations non-binding. As cents get scarce, it says merchants will need to round a transaction up or down to the nearest five cents. It also says most states still compute sales tax on a total figured to the penny, and that changing those tax rules belongs to the states.

The practical advice Treasury prints is narrower than a national law:

• Round only cash. Checks, credit cards, debit cards, gift cards, foreign currency, government checks, and split payments should stay at the exact cent.
• Apply any cash rounding after duties, fees, and taxes, not before.
• Keep the method consistent. Treasury says a receipt can show the rounding adjustment so the customer sees it.
• When the refund is cash and pennies are not used, round that cash refund fairly and say so. The business still sets its own refund policy.

Treasury quotes a November 21, 2025 report from the National Council of State Legislators, "Elimination of the Penny: Cents-able Considerations," for one symmetrical method. In that method, a final cash digit of 1, 2, 6, or 7 rounds down to a multiple of five cents, and a digit of 3, 4, 8, or 9 rounds up. A total of exactly one cent or two cents might be lifted to five cents. Treasury's own line is that cash totals should round down as often as they round up, so prices as a whole should not rise. The Federal Reserve's penny FAQ declines to give rounding advice at all. Distribution is the Fed's role. Store policy is not.

Banks, the Fed, and coin machines

Treasury says consumers may keep depositing pennies at their financial institutions, and businesses may keep depositing them too. The coins stay legal tender at face value. For a large drop-off, Treasury says some banks want the coins rolled or wrapped, and it tells you to ask that bank before you walk in.

The Federal Reserve sits behind the teller window. It does not take jars from the public, and it does not hand coins to shoppers or to stores. Its FAQ says the Reserve is committed to penny deposits from banks and credit unions, and that terminals serving the Fed accept those deposits. A few rows on that page have named a later start for deposits, so the list itself is the record. Orders are separate. Some terminals cannot fill a bank's request for pennies because the local stock is thin. The Fed says it will keep filling orders where inventory allows, and it posts which sites are out. Whether your branch can order rolls is a question for the branch.

A grocery-store coin machine is not in those FAQs. Nothing on the Treasury or Fed pages tells a private kiosk to keep a slot open for cents. Read the machine, or skip it and use the bank.

The last circulating pieces were not pocket change

On November 18, 2025, the Mint said Stack's Bowers Galleries would auction the last circulating one-cent coins that December. The sale was 232 three-coin sets. Each set holds a Philadelphia circulating cent, a Denver circulating cent, and a 99.99 percent 24-karat gold uncirculated cent from Philadelphia. The coins carry an Omega privy mark. Set 232 also includes the three dies that struck them. Live bidding was set for December 11, 2025. Treasurer Beach and Acting Director McNally ran the presses for the final Philadelphia Omega pieces. The Mint's circulating penny page records that 2025 auction of the last 232 circulating pennies in those sets. A cent you got in change is not one of those sets.

The Mint penny FAQ says numismatic cents continue in limited quantities. Suspending the circulating coin is not the same sentence as "no cent will ever be struck again."

Most Memorial and Shield cents are still one cent

Sort by the reverse before you chase a rarity. Ears of wheat are the older Lincoln back, covered in the Wheat cent note and on the Wheat series page. Frank Gasparro's Memorial building is the 1959–2008 series. The Union Shield is the circulating type from 2010. Four different 2009 backs live on the Bicentennial cent page, separate from the Shield chart.

Common Memorial and Shield cents in a jar are face value. The pages above are where the exceptions are named, without a price typed from memory. On the Memorial page, the splits worth knowing are 1960 large date versus small date, 1970-S large date versus small date, the 1982 bronze-versus-zinc planchet, and the named doubled dies from 1969-S, 1972, 1983, 1984, and 1995. The Shield page does not invent a traditional key. It treats 2025 as the last year of circulation strikes, and it leaves West Point cents and the Extra V off the ordinary Philadelphia and Denver rows.

31 U.S.C. § 5112 still describes the one-cent coin, except where the Secretary sets a different copper-and-zinc mix, as 95 percent copper and 5 percent zinc. That is the heavy copper cent. The Mint's history timeline marks 1982 as the year circulating cents switched to copper-plated zinc because copper prices had risen. Both alloys exist with the date 1982. The Memorial page says so and does not pretend the published mintage is split by planchet. The 2025 cent on the Mint FAQ is the plated coin: 2.5 percent copper and 97.5 percent zinc.

If you want a copper figure for the older alloy, use the calculator. It reads a spot price. It is not an offer. It is also not permission to melt. 31 C.F.R. § 82.1 prohibits melting, treating, or exporting any one-cent coin unless an exception in § 82.2 applies. A written Treasury license is one of those exceptions. The Mint FAQ states the same limit. Original red versus a brown surface is a color call, not an extra price on top of face value.

If you want someone to look

Public shop pages are the coin dealer directory, including Ohio. If you would rather carry the jar into a room full of tables, the public list is coin shows.

This is general information, not legal or financial advice.

People Also Ask

Are my pennies still legal tender?

Yes. The Mint and Treasury both say the cent remains legal tender after circulating production stopped. Treasury says it keeps its face value indefinitely. You can still spend pennies at a business that accepts them.

Do stores have to round cash purchases to the nearest nickel?

Treasury's December 23, 2025 FAQ is non-binding guidance, not a federal rounding statute. Where a business rounds because penny change is gone, Treasury recommends rounding only the final cash total, after tax, to the nearest five cents. Checks, cards, and other non-cash payments stay at the exact cent. The Federal Reserve says rounding rules are outside its job.

Will a bank or a coin machine still take pennies?

Treasury says consumers may still deposit pennies at their financial institutions. A large amount may need to be rolled first, so ask that bank. The Federal Reserve accepts penny deposits from banks and credit unions and does not take coin from the public. Those pages do not set a rule for a private coin-counting kiosk.

Are Memorial and Shield cents worth more than face value?

Most of them are ordinary. Named varieties, the 1982 planchet change, and the Wheat dates people hunt are written on the series pages. This note does not print a price.

Can I melt pre-1982 copper cents?

No, not as a scrap plan. 31 C.F.R. § 82.1 prohibits melting, treating, or exporting one-cent coins except for the narrow cases in § 82.2, including a written Treasury license. The calculator can show a metal figure. That figure is not a license and not a bid.