THE LAST PENNY IN AMERICA: NO MORE COMMON CENTS
In the grand, echoing halls of the Philadelphia Mint—where history was minted one copper-nickel sandwich at a time—November 12, 2025, dawned like a bad hangover after a wild election party. The air smelled of fresh alloy and regret, and the machines hummed their final dirge. It was the end of an era, the copper-clad curtain call for the penny, that humble one-cent hero who'd been flipping through American pockets since 1793. Two hundred and thirty years of jingling mediocrity, and now? Kaput. And who was the grim reaper in this fiscal funeral? None other than President Donald J. Trump, the man whose hair defied gravity and whose tariffs defied logic. Under his watch, inflation had ballooned like a Trump Tower penthouse, turning every grocery run into a game of "Will This Cost a Pretty Penny or My Firstborn?" And in a move that was equal parts genius and gall, Trump had signed the executive order: The Penny-Pinching Preservation Act of 2025. Or as he called it on Truth Social, "FAKE NEWS COINS ARE DEAD! LINCOLN'S LOG CABIN ON THE DOLLAR NOW—BEST DEAL EVER!"
Picture this: a ceremonial minting event, broadcast live on Fox News and grumbled about on MSNBC. The Mint's director, a bespectacled bureaucrat named Dr. Eliza Quarters (yes, that was her real name; irony is the only thing cheaper than a penny these days), stood at the podium, flanked by a choir of retired numismatists singing a mournful rendition of "America the Beautiful" retitled "America the Penniless." The crowd—mostly conspiracy theorists convinced this was the deep state's plot to force us all onto crypto, and a smattering of hoarders clutching jars of Abe Lincolns like they were the last Twinkies on Earth—watched as the final batch of 1,000 pennies rolled off the line. Each one gleamed with false promise, stamped with the date that would make collectors cream their khakis: 2025, the Year the Cent Went Sent.But let's zoom in on our hero—or anti-hero, depending on how you feel about loose change. Meet Percy the Penny, the very last one struck that fateful Wednesday. Percy wasn't born yesterday; he'd been forged in the fires of fiscal folly, his obverse side etched with Lincoln's somber stare, his reverse a shield that screamed "United We Stand, Divided We Nickel." As the hydraulic press clamped down for that final thwunk, Percy tumbled into a velvet-lined tray, whispering to his siblings (all 999 of them, destined for the Smithsonian's "What If We Still Had Dignity?" exhibit), "Guys, this feels... off. Like I'm not even worth the stamp on my own obituary."
Percy's first adventure began immediately, because even in obsolescence, a penny's gotta roll. Scooped up by a wide-eyed intern named Lenny—a trust-fund kid slumming it for TikTok clout—Percy was pocketed and forgotten until Lenny hit the nearest Wawa for a hoagie that cost $12.47. "Keep the change," Lenny mumbled to the cashier, a grizzled vet named Gus who eyed the three pennies like they were Confederate doubloons. Gus, a man who'd seen more inflation than a birthday balloon at a kid's party, snorted. "Kid, in the Trump era, three cents buys you a whisper of regret. But hey, a penny saved is a penny earned—or in this case, a penny squandered." He swept Percy into the till, where he joined a graveyard of zinc cores and tarnished dreams. Three hundred billion pennies already out there, the Treasury said, enough to pave the road to economic hell. But Gus knew better: they were just waiting for the great rounding-off, when cash registers would snap to the nearest nickel like a bad blind date.
Percy, ever the optimist (or masochist), didn't stay buried long. That night, as Gus closed up, a street performer named Zelda—think Joni Mitchell meets a malfunctioning slot machine—busked outside with her ukulele and a sign reading "A Penny for Your Thoughts? Inflation Says No." Zelda was the queen of penny idioms, her act a whirlwind of folksy wisdom laced with bitterness. "Folks," she'd croon, strumming a tune about fiscal foreplay, "Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves—until Trump watches the dollars and the pennies commit seppuku!" Her hat brimmed with forgotten cents, each one a tiny talisman of luck she'd never cashed in. Spotting Percy's shine in the till, Zelda swiped him during Gus's smoke break. "You, little guy," she cooed, flipping him skyward, "Find a penny, pick it up, and all day long you'll have good luck. But today? Lady Luck's on strike—demanding hazard pay for dodging tariffs."
Zelda's pockets were a portal to Penny Purgatory: a linty nexus of every penny counts regrets and to pinch pennies paranoia. She was in Philly for the Mint's farewell bash, but really, she was chasing a story—a satirical ballad about the president who wasn't even worth a penny. Trump, you see, had framed the penny's demise as his personal triumph over "Biden's Big Beautiful Inflation," claiming in a rally rant that Abe Lincoln himself had endorsed it via séance. "Lincoln said, 'Four score and seven cents ago...'" the crowd had chanted, half-drunk on Diet Coke and denial. Zelda, ever the wordsmith, planned to weave Percy's tale into her magnum opus: The Ballad of the Brass-Plated Bust. But first, she needed a muse. Enter Percy, who—being a penny—had thoughts deeper than your average Bitcoin bro.
As Zelda wandered the moonlit streets of Old City, Percy bounced against her thigh, pondering his plight. "I'm obsolete," he monologued internally, his copper core corroding with existential dread. "Not worth a plugged nickel. Hell, not worth a penny—that's me now, the punchline to my own proverb." He'd overheard the Mint's stats: 3.69 cents to make him in 2024, a loss the Treasury couldn't stomach anymore. Fifty-six million bucks saved annually? That was Trump's math—in for a penny, in for a pound of pork-barrel promises. Zelda, sensing his vibe (or maybe just the jingle), paused at a fountain where tourists tossed wishes. "What's eating you, Abe?" she asked, fishing him out. Percy, if he could talk, would've quipped, "Inflation, darling. It's turned me from it's worth every penny to it costs a pretty penny just to exist."
Their odyssey escalated at dawn, when Zelda hitched a ride with a trucker named Buck—rhymes with "fuck," which was his reaction to the penny news. Buck was a MAGA die-hard, his dash adorned with Trump bobbleheads and a bumper sticker: "Pennies from Heaven? Nah, Pennies from Hell—Thanks, Obama!" (Even in 2025, blame was evergreen.) As they barreled down I-95 toward D.C., where Trump was set to gloat at a "Cent-less Victory" presser, Buck regaled Zelda with his hot takes. "That Thatcher broad nailed it: Pennies do not come from heaven. They have to be earned here on earth. But under Sleepy Joe, we were earning 'em in red ink! Trump's killin' the penny like he killed the swamp—boom, savings! And Al Capone? He'd say, I'd rather have four quarters than one hundred pennies. Friendship over fiat, baby!"
Zelda rolled her eyes, palming Percy like a worry bead. "Buck, you're in for a penny, in for a pound of baloney. This ain't savings; it's surrender. Businesses rounding to the nickel? That's code for 'Screw the poor—they'll pay the extra cent.' And Trump? The man's not worth a penny—he's the guy who'd gold-plate his own obsolescence." Percy, vibrating with vindication, nearly chipped a tooth on Buck's lighter. The trucker, mistaking the jingle for judgment, swerved. "What the—? You got a poltergeist in there? Or is that the ghost of Ben Franklin, pissed we ignored his watch the pennies warning?"
By midday, they'd infiltrated the White House periphery, where protesters clashed like poorly minted coins: Save the Penny hippies chanting "Every cent counts!" versus Free Market Fiends yelling "No more common cents—time for sense!" (The pun had gone viral, spawning memes of Trump as a cent-less clown.) Zelda, Percy in her fist, slipped into the press pen disguised as a blogger from Coin World Weekly. The room buzzed with hacks hawking headlines: "Trump Inflation: The Penny Drops!" and "From Honest Abe to Dishonest Gains: 230 Years of Copper Betrayal."
Then, the man himself swaggered in—orange as a carrot penny prototype, tie askew like a noose at a hanging. "Folks," Trump boomed, "the penny? Total disaster. Cost more to make than Mar-a-Lago's toilet paper. I saved you billions—believe me. Lincoln's thrilled; he texted me last night. 'Donny, four score and seven tariffs ago...'" The crowd tittered, but Zelda saw her shot. She lobbed Percy onto the podium mid-rant, a copper comet arcing through the air. "A penny for your thoughts, Mr. President!" she hollered. "Worth every cent, or just another pretty expense?"
Chaos erupted. Secret Service dove like linemen; reporters trampled for the scoop. Percy skittered across the eagle-emblazoned rug, dodging heels and hubris, until he lodged under Trump's loafer. The Donald paused, mid-gesture, and bent—ever so slightly—to retrieve him. "Look at this beauty," he marveled, holding Percy aloft like Simba in The Lion King. "The last one! Mine now. Greatest penny ever—tremendous shine, folks." But as he pocketed it, a flicker of something crossed his face: Was it nostalgia? Guilt? Or just the realization that even he, the Art of the Deal deity, couldn't haggle with history?
Percy, trapped in the tweed twilight of Trump's trousers, reflected on his journey. From Mint to Wawa, busker to Beltway, he'd been the unwitting witness to America's cent-less slide. "No more common cents," he mused, punning posthumously. "Just common sense: Save the small stuff, or lose it all." Zelda, ejected but exhilarated, live-tweeted the toss: #LastPennyRevolt. It went mega, spawning a movement—Penny Parties springing up, folks hoarding their jars like Smaug with small change. Businesses grumbled but adapted, rounding with reluctant grace. Canada chuckled from the north: "Took you long enough, eh?"In the end, Percy stayed with Trump—a talisman in the tower, flipped absentmindedly during late-night deal-making. "In for a penny," the president would mutter to aides, "in for a billion." But deep down, Percy knew: He was the last laugh, the final flip, the one-cent sage in a world gone nickel-and-dime. And as the nation jingled on without him—poorer in pockets, richer in punchlines—America learned the hard way: Some things, once spent, can't be earned back. Not even with all the tariffs in Trump Tower.
Fade to black on a fountain, Zelda strumming her ukulele under starry skies. "Every penny counts," she sang softly, "even the ones that don't." The crowd tossed nickels—shiny, sufficient, a little less lucky. But hey, in a world without pennies, who needs luck? Just good, hard cents.
Picture this: a ceremonial minting event, broadcast live on Fox News and grumbled about on MSNBC. The Mint's director, a bespectacled bureaucrat named Dr. Eliza Quarters (yes, that was her real name; irony is the only thing cheaper than a penny these days), stood at the podium, flanked by a choir of retired numismatists singing a mournful rendition of "America the Beautiful" retitled "America the Penniless." The crowd—mostly conspiracy theorists convinced this was the deep state's plot to force us all onto crypto, and a smattering of hoarders clutching jars of Abe Lincolns like they were the last Twinkies on Earth—watched as the final batch of 1,000 pennies rolled off the line. Each one gleamed with false promise, stamped with the date that would make collectors cream their khakis: 2025, the Year the Cent Went Sent.But let's zoom in on our hero—or anti-hero, depending on how you feel about loose change. Meet Percy the Penny, the very last one struck that fateful Wednesday. Percy wasn't born yesterday; he'd been forged in the fires of fiscal folly, his obverse side etched with Lincoln's somber stare, his reverse a shield that screamed "United We Stand, Divided We Nickel." As the hydraulic press clamped down for that final thwunk, Percy tumbled into a velvet-lined tray, whispering to his siblings (all 999 of them, destined for the Smithsonian's "What If We Still Had Dignity?" exhibit), "Guys, this feels... off. Like I'm not even worth the stamp on my own obituary."
Percy's first adventure began immediately, because even in obsolescence, a penny's gotta roll. Scooped up by a wide-eyed intern named Lenny—a trust-fund kid slumming it for TikTok clout—Percy was pocketed and forgotten until Lenny hit the nearest Wawa for a hoagie that cost $12.47. "Keep the change," Lenny mumbled to the cashier, a grizzled vet named Gus who eyed the three pennies like they were Confederate doubloons. Gus, a man who'd seen more inflation than a birthday balloon at a kid's party, snorted. "Kid, in the Trump era, three cents buys you a whisper of regret. But hey, a penny saved is a penny earned—or in this case, a penny squandered." He swept Percy into the till, where he joined a graveyard of zinc cores and tarnished dreams. Three hundred billion pennies already out there, the Treasury said, enough to pave the road to economic hell. But Gus knew better: they were just waiting for the great rounding-off, when cash registers would snap to the nearest nickel like a bad blind date.
Percy, ever the optimist (or masochist), didn't stay buried long. That night, as Gus closed up, a street performer named Zelda—think Joni Mitchell meets a malfunctioning slot machine—busked outside with her ukulele and a sign reading "A Penny for Your Thoughts? Inflation Says No." Zelda was the queen of penny idioms, her act a whirlwind of folksy wisdom laced with bitterness. "Folks," she'd croon, strumming a tune about fiscal foreplay, "Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves—until Trump watches the dollars and the pennies commit seppuku!" Her hat brimmed with forgotten cents, each one a tiny talisman of luck she'd never cashed in. Spotting Percy's shine in the till, Zelda swiped him during Gus's smoke break. "You, little guy," she cooed, flipping him skyward, "Find a penny, pick it up, and all day long you'll have good luck. But today? Lady Luck's on strike—demanding hazard pay for dodging tariffs."
Zelda's pockets were a portal to Penny Purgatory: a linty nexus of every penny counts regrets and to pinch pennies paranoia. She was in Philly for the Mint's farewell bash, but really, she was chasing a story—a satirical ballad about the president who wasn't even worth a penny. Trump, you see, had framed the penny's demise as his personal triumph over "Biden's Big Beautiful Inflation," claiming in a rally rant that Abe Lincoln himself had endorsed it via séance. "Lincoln said, 'Four score and seven cents ago...'" the crowd had chanted, half-drunk on Diet Coke and denial. Zelda, ever the wordsmith, planned to weave Percy's tale into her magnum opus: The Ballad of the Brass-Plated Bust. But first, she needed a muse. Enter Percy, who—being a penny—had thoughts deeper than your average Bitcoin bro.
As Zelda wandered the moonlit streets of Old City, Percy bounced against her thigh, pondering his plight. "I'm obsolete," he monologued internally, his copper core corroding with existential dread. "Not worth a plugged nickel. Hell, not worth a penny—that's me now, the punchline to my own proverb." He'd overheard the Mint's stats: 3.69 cents to make him in 2024, a loss the Treasury couldn't stomach anymore. Fifty-six million bucks saved annually? That was Trump's math—in for a penny, in for a pound of pork-barrel promises. Zelda, sensing his vibe (or maybe just the jingle), paused at a fountain where tourists tossed wishes. "What's eating you, Abe?" she asked, fishing him out. Percy, if he could talk, would've quipped, "Inflation, darling. It's turned me from it's worth every penny to it costs a pretty penny just to exist."
Their odyssey escalated at dawn, when Zelda hitched a ride with a trucker named Buck—rhymes with "fuck," which was his reaction to the penny news. Buck was a MAGA die-hard, his dash adorned with Trump bobbleheads and a bumper sticker: "Pennies from Heaven? Nah, Pennies from Hell—Thanks, Obama!" (Even in 2025, blame was evergreen.) As they barreled down I-95 toward D.C., where Trump was set to gloat at a "Cent-less Victory" presser, Buck regaled Zelda with his hot takes. "That Thatcher broad nailed it: Pennies do not come from heaven. They have to be earned here on earth. But under Sleepy Joe, we were earning 'em in red ink! Trump's killin' the penny like he killed the swamp—boom, savings! And Al Capone? He'd say, I'd rather have four quarters than one hundred pennies. Friendship over fiat, baby!"
Zelda rolled her eyes, palming Percy like a worry bead. "Buck, you're in for a penny, in for a pound of baloney. This ain't savings; it's surrender. Businesses rounding to the nickel? That's code for 'Screw the poor—they'll pay the extra cent.' And Trump? The man's not worth a penny—he's the guy who'd gold-plate his own obsolescence." Percy, vibrating with vindication, nearly chipped a tooth on Buck's lighter. The trucker, mistaking the jingle for judgment, swerved. "What the—? You got a poltergeist in there? Or is that the ghost of Ben Franklin, pissed we ignored his watch the pennies warning?"
By midday, they'd infiltrated the White House periphery, where protesters clashed like poorly minted coins: Save the Penny hippies chanting "Every cent counts!" versus Free Market Fiends yelling "No more common cents—time for sense!" (The pun had gone viral, spawning memes of Trump as a cent-less clown.) Zelda, Percy in her fist, slipped into the press pen disguised as a blogger from Coin World Weekly. The room buzzed with hacks hawking headlines: "Trump Inflation: The Penny Drops!" and "From Honest Abe to Dishonest Gains: 230 Years of Copper Betrayal."
Then, the man himself swaggered in—orange as a carrot penny prototype, tie askew like a noose at a hanging. "Folks," Trump boomed, "the penny? Total disaster. Cost more to make than Mar-a-Lago's toilet paper. I saved you billions—believe me. Lincoln's thrilled; he texted me last night. 'Donny, four score and seven tariffs ago...'" The crowd tittered, but Zelda saw her shot. She lobbed Percy onto the podium mid-rant, a copper comet arcing through the air. "A penny for your thoughts, Mr. President!" she hollered. "Worth every cent, or just another pretty expense?"
Chaos erupted. Secret Service dove like linemen; reporters trampled for the scoop. Percy skittered across the eagle-emblazoned rug, dodging heels and hubris, until he lodged under Trump's loafer. The Donald paused, mid-gesture, and bent—ever so slightly—to retrieve him. "Look at this beauty," he marveled, holding Percy aloft like Simba in The Lion King. "The last one! Mine now. Greatest penny ever—tremendous shine, folks." But as he pocketed it, a flicker of something crossed his face: Was it nostalgia? Guilt? Or just the realization that even he, the Art of the Deal deity, couldn't haggle with history?
Percy, trapped in the tweed twilight of Trump's trousers, reflected on his journey. From Mint to Wawa, busker to Beltway, he'd been the unwitting witness to America's cent-less slide. "No more common cents," he mused, punning posthumously. "Just common sense: Save the small stuff, or lose it all." Zelda, ejected but exhilarated, live-tweeted the toss: #LastPennyRevolt. It went mega, spawning a movement—Penny Parties springing up, folks hoarding their jars like Smaug with small change. Businesses grumbled but adapted, rounding with reluctant grace. Canada chuckled from the north: "Took you long enough, eh?"In the end, Percy stayed with Trump—a talisman in the tower, flipped absentmindedly during late-night deal-making. "In for a penny," the president would mutter to aides, "in for a billion." But deep down, Percy knew: He was the last laugh, the final flip, the one-cent sage in a world gone nickel-and-dime. And as the nation jingled on without him—poorer in pockets, richer in punchlines—America learned the hard way: Some things, once spent, can't be earned back. Not even with all the tariffs in Trump Tower.
Fade to black on a fountain, Zelda strumming her ukulele under starry skies. "Every penny counts," she sang softly, "even the ones that don't." The crowd tossed nickels—shiny, sufficient, a little less lucky. But hey, in a world without pennies, who needs luck? Just good, hard cents.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: No pennies were harmed in the writing of this story, mostly because they were already economically dead before we started. The author accepts payment in nickels or higher denominations only. Pennies will be rounded down to zero and donated to the "Please Take These Pennies Off Our Hands" foundation. Trump quotes are satirical. Economic facts are real. The absurdity is unfortunately both.