Easan Katir Wealth Management

  National One Cent Day 2025 arrives on April 1st, a Tuesday, bathed in the usual hum of penny-pinching pride, a day to honor the humblest coin, the one-cent piece, born in 1787 under the fingers of a fledgling mint, its copper heart beating through centuries of American hands. This year, though, the air crackles with a different tune—collectors, those hawk-eyed hoarders of numismatic treasure, are buzzing, their sights set on the 2025 limited edition pennies, whispers of rarity trailing in the wake of a bold directive from the administration.

The penny, that small, oft-overlooked disc—Lincoln’s stern profile gazing into the future since 1909—has long been a collector’s darling, from the Fugio cents of Franklin’s design to the Chain cents of the early Mint, through the Flying Eagle and Indian Head, down to the wheat stalks and Union Shield of today. But now, on this March 30th, 2025, just days shy of the holiday, the news has broken like a dropped coin on a quiet floor: President Donald Trump, on February 9th, declared he’d ordered Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to halt penny production, a move to slice waste from the nation’s budget, each cent costing a bruising 3.7 cents to mint in 2024 alone. Congress, not the President, holds the reins on coinage, yet the word has stirred the waters—production might screech to a stop, and with it, the 2025 penny becomes a ghost, a final whisper of a fading era.

Collectors, those restless souls who chase the allure of rarity, see profit in this shadow. The U.S. Mint, ever the maestro of metal, had slated a 2025-S Proof Lincoln Shield Cent for release on March 4th, a San Francisco-minted gem, uncirculated, pristine, its copper-zinc gleam a siren call. Pre-sales hummed before the administration’s bombshell, but now—now it’s a fever. If 2025 marks the penny’s swan song, these limited editions, struck in smaller runs than the billions churned out yearly (4.5 billion in 2023 alone), could soar. The precedent’s there: Canada ditched its penny in 2012, and by 2015, collectors were scrambling for 1920s relics and 1936 “dot” cents, their scarcity driving prices skyward. Here, the 2025 penny, especially proofs or errors—say, a misstruck date or a lingering copper echo of pre-1982 days—could climb from cents to thousands, maybe millions, as the 1943 bronze misfits did, one fetching $2.6 million.

The hunt’s on. Coin shops hum with chatter, eBay listings flicker like fireflies, and forums buzz with speculation. “It’s the end of an era,” one collector mutters, eyeing a 2025 proof, “and the beginning of a fortune.” The Mint’s losses—$85.3 million in 2024—fuel the fire; why mint what costs more than it’s worth? Yet for the numismatist, value isn’t in the face but the chase. National One Cent Day 2025, then, isn’t just a nod to history—it’s a clarion call, a race against a vanishing supply, as collectors squint into their loupes and dream of the last penny’s shine. 

 Every day we shop, not in the grocery store, but in the biggest auction market on the planet, the US Treasury bond market. We search along the 30-year yield curve for the optimum place to park cash.