Cent (United States coin)

Cent

United States
Value	0.01 U.S. Dollars
Mass	2.5 g (0.080 troy oz)
Diameter	19.05 mm (0.750 in)
Thickness	1.52 mm (0.0598 in)
Edge	Plain
Composition	1982–present copper-plated zinc 97.5% Zn, 2.5% Cu
Years of minting	1793–present
Catalog number	–
Obverse
Design	Abraham Lincoln
Designer	Victor D. Brenner
Design date	1909 (design was modified in 2010)
Reverse
Design	Union Shield
Designer	Lyndall Bass
Design date	2010–present

Reverses of the Lincoln cent
Wheat (1909–1958)
Lincoln Memorial (1959–2008)
Birth and early childhood in Kentucky (Lincoln Bicentennial, 2009)
Formative Years in Indiana (Lincoln Bicentennial, 2009)
Professional life in Illinois (Lincoln Bicentennial, 2009)
Presidency in DC (Lincoln Bicentennial, 2009)
Union shield (2010–present)

The United States one-cent coin, commonly known as a penny, is a unit of currency equaling one-hundredth of a United States dollar. The cent's symbol is ¢. 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 a penny is "" and the U.S. Treasury's official name is "one cent piece". The colloquial term penny derives from the British coin of the same name, the pre-decimal version of which had a similar value. In American English, pennies is the plural form. (The plural form pence—standard in British English—is not used in American English.)

Although the coin's abolition has been proposed because it is now worth very little, there are currently no firm plans to eliminate the penny. As of 2015, based on the U.S. Mint Annual Report released for 2014, it costs the U.S. Mint 1.67 cents (down from 2.41 cents in 2011 and 1.83 cents in 2013) to make one cent because of the cost of materials, production, and distribution. This figure includes the Mint's fixed components for distribution and fabrication, as well as Mint overhead allocated to the penny. Fixed costs and overhead would have to be absorbed by other circulating coins without the penny. The loss from producing the one cent coin in the United States for the year of 2013 was $55,000,000. This was a slight decrease from 2012, the year before, which had a production loss of $58,000,000.