PENNY COLOSSUS
Penny Colossus (2023) Paper collage
It’s official. The penny is no more. As of Wednesday, November 12, 2025 the US Mint has ceased production of the copper penny, the cost of which exceeds its value by more than two additional pennies, said to be too wasteful, despite the fact that it costs fourteen cents to make a nickel, 6 cents to make a dime and fifteen to make a quarter. The first penny was minted in 1793 and featured a frightened-looking Liberty with tousled hair people found objectionable. In 1793, a penny would buy you a biscuit, a candle or a piece of candy. Penny candy was still a thing for post-WWII kids like me.
The National Association of Convenience Stores has long advocated for the abolition of the penny, but its sudden demise this week unaccompanied by instructions for how to carry on, came as a shock to them and all retailers. “This is not the way we wanted it to go,” said its representative. Round up? Round down? Hoard? Redeem for prizes? Some banks, paradoxicially, now are rationing pennies. Make it make sense!
I keep a jar of Wheaties for uses to be determined. I have two old typewriters with the cent sign offered in the lowercase, just below the @, a sign that rose to an unimaginable dominance. I don’t remember knowing what it was for as a kid. I still like that the cent sign always followed the number, so that 5 cents was written as pronouced, as opposed to $1.
The faces of coins tell stories about a people, a civilization. The copper penny kept President Lincoln present, he who freed the slaves. The current regime probably doesn’t want that reminder, but it’s demise certainly can’t be entirely attributed to wasteful spending. What’s now proposed is a silver dollar with Dear Leader’s face both obverse and reverse, reading both E PLURIBUS UNUM and FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT. Not incidentally, its production would violate federal law, which prohibits depictions of living persons on the nation’s currency for precisely the reason he wants it.
When I made this collage, simple as it appears, it took a while to properly position the penny. I chose to make the Latin phrase fully visible as an antidote to the mayhem in the foreground, the calm that follows the storm. Francisco Goya painted this fearful scene in Spain during the Peninsular War, whatever that was, between 1808 and 1812. And there are other versions. Sometimes the Giant seems forlorn, his back to the world beneath a crescent moon, but he’s aggressive in this version, and chaos reigns below, people and horses and cattle scattering in terror, blood on the ground.
I could never have imagined that one day this juxtaposition of giant and penny might be understood as prescient or profound.
The Windows shortcut for the cent sign is Alt + 0162.
Prints available. Write me! Link in the Contact page.
