A special collection of 232 sets of the last 2025 pennies produced by the U.S. Mint will be auctioned off later this week. Already collectors are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to own them.
U.S. Mint presses final cent after more than 200 years
America’s last penny was minted at the United States Mint in Philadelphia, ending coin production that began in 1793 and ended on November 12.
The last penny minted is about to be auctioned off, and there are signs that it will fetch (excuse the word) quite a penny.
The U.S. Mint announced last month that the auction will be held on Thursday, Dec. 11, and will be handled by Stack’s Bowers Gallery. This “special sale” will feature a 232-piece three-coin set, including pairs of 24-carat uncirculated and circulated pennies, from the final production run at the Mint’s manufacturing facilities in Philadelphia and Denver.
Potential buyers have already begun bidding online on Stack’s Bowers Gallery site. Bids on most lots range from about $10,000 to $34,000, with the final lot going for about $290,000.
However, these bids could be even higher, as anonymous online bidding increases at standard intervals without the highest bid being made public. Once live bidding begins, the amount may exceed the amount listed on the site at that time.
John Kraljevich, director of numismatic Americana at Stack’s Bowers, told USA TODAY that auctioneers are uncertain how the bidding will proceed because “nobody has had a chance to bid on something like this before. There’s nothing comparable.” “These things work because there are many different factors to desirability.”
What’s so special about Pennies up for auction?
The 232 set consists of the last circulation pennies ever minted by the U.S. Mint. Each set includes one of the last 323 minted at the Philadelphia Mint and one of the last 232 minted at the Denver Mint. Each set also includes the first ever 24-karat gold penny available in gold, making it not a special proof coin, but one of the rarest gold coins produced by the U.S. Mint.
The numbers in the set represent 232 years since the penny’s creation in 1793. Every penny bears the Ω symbol, or Omega’s private mark, which marks the end of the penny and reflects the coin’s unique characteristics.
Each set comes with a certificate of authenticity with serial number, and the final lot, set number 232, also comes with the three original dies used to strike the coins.
The final penny set goes beyond coin collecting in some ways, Kraljevic said. As for Penny, he said, “You’re really talking about a cultural icon. I mean, there’s a reason there were songs about Penny and movies about Penny, and, you know, Ben Franklin had a saying about Penny.” “They really hold a central place in our culture like no other coin.”
As a result, Kraljevic expects widespread interest in the auction. “I think we’ll see interest not only from avid coin collectors per se, but also from people who are interested in all kinds of high-end collectibles and all kinds of culturally interesting objects,” he said.
John Albanese, co-founder of Rare Coin Certification CAC Grading, which authenticated the U.S. Mint’s last Lincoln cent, agrees. “There will be thousands of very serious collectors who are interested,” he told USA TODAY when announcing the auction. “There are hundreds of thousands of people who are not serious collectors but just want to buy something pretty…I expect them to do well.” At the time, he estimated the 232 three-coin sets would likely fetch about $45,000 to $50,000 each.
When will the Last Penny Auction take place?
Live bidding for the 232 sets begins Thursday, December 11th at noon ET/9am PT. The auction will be held at Stack’s Bowers Gallery headquarters in Costa Mesa, California, and will be livestreamed on its website.
Now that the last penny has been minted, will there be any more pennies?
No, there are billions of pennies in circulation, and Kraljevic estimates that the U.S. Mint has produced about 31 billion pennies in the past six years. And they are still viable currencies. It’s just that the U.S. Mint doesn’t make them anymore.
The U.S. Mint said in its 2024 annual report that one penny costs 3.69 cents to produce. As a result, President Donald Trump in February ordered the Treasury Department to stop minting pennies.
Although pennies are still in circulation, some stores are starting to run out of pennies, and some McDonald’s stores are also experiencing a penny shortage, requiring businesses to round cash transactions to the nearest nickel if a customer doesn’t have exact change.
Will my 2025 penny be worth more than a penny?
Not likely. Just as there was misleading hype about the value of some Lincoln Wheat pennies, there may be misinformation about the increase in the value of the 2025 penny.
Shortly after the Treasury Department announced plans in May to force the U.S. Mint to halt production, John Feigenbaum, publisher of the rare coin pricing guide Gray Sheet and executive director of the Professional Numismatics Guild (PNG), a nonprofit group made up of many of the nation’s rare coin experts, told USA TODAY, “Statistically, there’s nothing to say they should be worth anything.”
“There’s a lot of money out there, so there’s no need for people to look at these prices and think that a penny in the change tray next to their bed is automatically worth this amount of money,” Kraljevic said. “This is a very special kind of thing, so I think it’s probably important to highlight that.”
And you may not have seen the last new penny minted. The U.S. Mint does not intend to create new pennies for circulation, but “it could take a hit in the future” due to the release of special collectibles, he said.
“So the cents aren’t done yet,” Kraljevic said. “We’re just stopping distribution production, so there’s a little bit of a difference there.”
Mike Snyder is a national trends news reporter for USA TODAY. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, and X, and email him at: mike snyder & @mikegsnider.bsky.social & @mikesnider & msnider@usatoday.com
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