🪙 No Pennies to Pinch—Now a Timely Title
When Marsha Franklin chose the title No Pennies to Pinch for a forthcoming book that we do still plan to publish, she was playing with metaphor: scarcity, thrift, and the emotional weight of small things. But now, the metaphor is literal. As of November 2025, the U.S. Mint has stopped producing pennies. The coin that once bore Lincoln’s profile and anchored idioms like “a penny for your thoughts” is slipping into history. 🌍 Global Echoes: When Small Coins Disappear We’re not the first. Other countries have retired their lowest-denomination coins: Canada phased out its penny in 2013, adopting “symmetric rounding” for cash transactions. Australia removed 1- and 2-cent coins in 1992; New Zealand followed in 1990 and later dropped its 5-cent coin. Sweden began eliminating öre coins in the 1970s, embracing digital payments early. The Bahamas , Belgium , and Finland have also discontinued small coins, citing inflation and production costs. In each case, the disappearance ...
