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DENVER — Twenty machines each churn out 750 shiny pennies a minute inside the U.S. Mint's stately 1904 building in the heart of this city's downtown. Across the street, five of the coins sit inside a sticky jar on vendor Marcella Armas's hot dog cart - collected over months, she said, but destined for "nothing."
"I don't need any pennies at all," said Armas, whose prices end in zeros and whose customers mostly pay with credit cards anyway. She considered President Donald Trump's recent edict to end the 1-cent production, then whispered, as if a bit ashamed: "I don't care. Isn't that crazy?"
If public outcry is any measure, not really. While many of Trump's executive orders have sparked outrage or bewilderment, his February directive to save money by killing the penny landed with the muted plop of a coin in a wishing well. Given that the penny now costs 3.5 times its value to produce, most Americans seem to have accepted that it has been freeloading for long enough.
"It makes sense. Oh gosh, I know, the pun," said Caroline Turco, assistant curator at the Money Museum in Colorado Springs, which is run by the country's premier coin appreciation group, the American Numismatic Association. Last month Turco was at the organization's annual National Money Show, a penny-defender's paradise if ever there was one. Yet America's breakup with the 1-cent coin was "not discussed at all, in any way."
The demise of this quintessentially American symbol, one that dates to George Washington's presidency, feels anticlimactic. But in an era of spiraling inflation - penny pinching, if you will - the days of penny candy are far behind us.
"I've been absolutely floored by watching young people just literally casting them out on the street," said Mike Nottelmann, a specialist in U.S. coins who co-hosts two podcasts and works the counter at Harlan J. Berk, a coin and bullion dealer in downtown Chicago. Only passersby, not collectors, have asked him about the penny's doom - which Nottelmann supports as a "practical" economic matter.
"I don't think anybody's going to be weeping," he said.
Among the loudest voices for the penny's ouster is Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, whose office is a block from the U.S. Mint. A Democrat with a libertarian streak, he touts it as a cost-saving and environmental move - fewer pennies, less mining.
Whether Trump can simply force the penny into retirement is unclear. Some economists say Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent can comply with the president's order by no longer requesting new pennies.
But in a public tour of the Denver mint this week, a guide said otherwise. "It's going to take an act of Congress," she said as 50 or so visitors watched trays of new pennies slide by on a conveyor belt. "So until Congress tells us to stop making the penny, it lives on."
Pennies make up about 40 percent of the coins produced at the Denver facility, one of two that makes them; the other is in Philadelphia. But scrapping pennies will simply lead to the Denver mint making more of the other denominations, including nickels - which, the guide emphasized, are also on the government dole, costing 13.8 cents each to produce.
The same point is made by the nation's most prominent penny proponent, Mark Weller, a lobbyist for Americans for Common Cents. The organization is backed by Artazn, which makes the blanks for pennies at a factory in Greene County, Tennessee. Officials there have expressed concern that Trump's order could lead to the loss of 300 jobs.
Weller declined an interview request, saying this "critical juncture" in the debate demands a low profile. But in an email, he said that ditching the cent could harm people who depend on cash while also generating a new form of "tax" if vendors round prices up to the nearest dollar.
The Trump administration has not yet presented any phaseout plan, so how pricing would work in a penniless America is unclear. Yet Canada, which stopped making pennies in 2012, saw no rounding-fueled price hikes. The government advised vendors to round cash transactions up or down to the nearest nickel, and most complied, said Anthony Rotondo, senior manager of domestic circulation at that country's mint. There was virtually zero public resistance.
"We've moved on," Canadian mint spokesman Alex Reeves said. "It was clear that Canadians weren't using pennies. They were underused, underappreciated."
Even if penny manufacturing in this country were to stop tomorrow, the penny would stick around. Some 240 billion are in circulation.
"That is enough for 2 cents for every human born since the dawn of time," noted Turco, the museum curator. "By the time you're not seeing them constantly, we'll all be gone."
That has not stopped speculation. Nottelmann recently spotted rolls of 2025 pennies, worth $1 each, selling for upward of $30 apiece on eBay. He dismissed those as "flavor of the month values, the hype of the moment." Others in the numismatic community, he said, are hoping the feds eventually legalize the melting of pennies, especially the pre-1982 vintage that are mostly made of valuable copper that could be sold. Today's are mostly zinc.
On the Facebook group of Pressed Penny Collectors, whose members seek out machines that flatten the coins into oval-shaped souvenirs, nostalgia has been negligible. "They're going to stop producing them, not round up all the existing pennies and put them in camps," one member quipped.
The coin's fate is likewise of little concern to Charles "Bill" Jackson in Oklahoma. He has been making penny press machines for 35 years, ever since he spotted a carnival barker earning $70 an hour printing phrases like "Jesus saves" and "I love you" on pennies.
"I design my machines so you can put a dime in there, and it's going to smash it just like it did that penny," he said.
Even Jon Florin, who runs a charity that encourages supporters to stage "penny wars" to raise money to combat stomach cancer, has dwelled little on Trump's order. The rise of GoFundMe and other digital fundraising tools has made collecting pennies for causes a quaint artifact of the last century.
"The penny wars thing has pretty much lost its luster," said Florin, executive director of No Stomach for Cancer. These days he is far more concerned about cuts to federal funding for medical research.
Turco recently had an epiphany about her own indifference. While brushing up on her penny facts, she learned that the Defense Department banned the coin from overseas military bases in 1980, citing its weight and cost to ship. Turco, whose husband is in the military, had lived on a base in Japan for three years. She'd never noticed the penny's absence.
She's thinking about the museum exhibit she will design if the order becomes reality. All coins tell a story and act as calling cards for nations and historical figures, she said. America's first penny, featuring a female image of Liberty, symbolized the aspirations of a new republic. Abraham Lincoln pennies, launched in 1909, broadcast this country's evolution into a nation with its own history and leaders. The final pennies, Turco suggested, could come to represent economic anxiety.
"Losing that smallest denomination will say something in terms of inflation and where we are in terms of economic insecurity," she said.
Nottelmann predicted the last pennies will eventually signal the beginning of the end of physical money. He does not particularly mind - collectors are motivated by scarcity, after all - though he hopes children will not lose a zest for coin collecting.
Thomas Bass, for his part, certainly has not. The 7-year-old from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, began his collection 2½ years ago, and it includes many wheat and Lincoln cents. He digs through bins at his local coin shop for years he doesn't have. His dentist gave him his own childhood collection.
Thomas took the Denver mint tour this week while on spring break. Seeing what may be one of the final runs of penny production was on his bucket list, according to mom Janie Bass.
"If they stop," Thomas said, "I might be really sad because pennies are like my favorite coin."
Still, he's already moving on. He pulled a plastic bag from his pocket to show what he'd bought from the mint's gift shop. It held a few commemorative quarters - and not a single penny.