Top State
...

Final pennies pressed sold at auction for more than $16 million

To those who argue that the U.S. penny had no value: some coin collectors beg to differ.

In fact, they doled out millions for the final pennies circulated in the U.S. before the government ended the cent’s production back in November.

The U.S. Mint sold 232 three-cent sets for a whopping sum of $16.76 million at an auction last Thursday hosted by Stack’s Bowers Galleries.

The 232nd set — containing the last three pennies ever made — sold for $800,000. That bidder also got the three dies that struck those Lincoln cents.

John Kraljevich, director of numismatic Americana at Stack’s Bowers, said it was the kind of auction where you don’t know the items’ market value until people make their bids.

“I’ve been going to coin auctions for 40 years, and I can tell you, I’ve never seen anything like this, because there’s never been anything like this,” Kraljevich said.

Stack’s Bowers President Brian Kendrella said: “They captured the public imagination like few rare coins we’ve ever handled.”

When it was introduced in 1793, a penny could buy a biscuit or a piece of candy. Now most of them are tucked away into jars or junk drawers.

They can also be relics of history for coin collectors.

Each set comprised 2025 pennies struck at the Philadelphia Mint, the Denver Mint and a 24-karat gold penny to cap off the end of an era. Each cent also bore a unique Omega symbol.

There were 232 grouplets to reflect each year the coin had been embedded in American culture.

“American culture has incorporated the penny into our lexicon, into our pop culture, into all of this stuff,” Kraljevich said. “And I think for a lot of people, the ending of production of cents for circulation is an item of nostalgia.”


U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach holds one of the last pennies pressed at the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia on Nov. 12. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
19 hours ago
catg4 Kia, Hyundai to repair millions of vehicles under anti-theft settlement 22 hours ago
catg4 Ford laying off all 1600 employees at a Kentucky plant amid major EV shift yesterday
catg4 Study: Drinking led to more than 4,000 recent deaths in Illinois yesterday
catg4 Korea Zinc to spend $6.6 billion for new Clarksville smelter yesterday
Latest State