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Background (From Wikipedia) |
The United States one-cent coin (symbol: ¢), often called the penny, is a unit of currency equaling one one-hundredth of a United States dollar. It has been the lowest-value physical unit of U.S. currency since the abolition of the half-cent in 1857 (the abstract mill, which has never been minted, equal to a tenth of a cent, continues to see limited use in the fields of taxation and finance). The first U.S. cent was produced in 1787, and the cent has been issued primarily as a copper or copper-plated coin throughout its history. Its obverse has featured the profile of President Abraham Lincoln since 1909, the centennial of his birth. From 1959 (the sesquicentennial of Lincoln's birth) to 2008, the reverse featured the Lincoln Memorial. Four different reverse designs in 2009 honored Lincoln's 200th birthday and a new, "permanent" reverse – the Union Shield – was introduced in 2010. The coin is 0.75 inches (19.05 mm) in diameter and 0.0598 inches (1.52 mm) in thickness. Its weight has varied, depending upon the composition of metals used in its production (see further below). The U.S. Mint's official name for the coin is "cent"[1] and the U.S. Treasury's official name is "one cent piece".[2] The colloquial term penny derives from the British coin of the same name, which occupies a similar place in the British system. In American English, pennies is the plural form (the plural form pence—standard in British English—is not used in reference to American coins). In the early 2010s the price of metal used to make pennies rose to a noticeable cost to the mint which peaked at more than $0.02 for the $0.01 face-value coin. This pushed the mint to look for alternative metals again for the coin, and also brought the penny debate into more focus. There are currently no firm plans to eliminate the penny as arguments for and against the coin continue to be debated.[3] |