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The penny, also known as the cent, is a coin in the United States representing one-hundredth of a dollar.It has been the lowest face-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 Lincoln cent (sometimes called the Lincoln penny) is a one-cent coin that has been struck by the United States Mint since 1909. The obverse or heads side was designed by Victor David Brenner , as was the original reverse, depicting two stalks of wheat (thus "wheat pennies", struck 1909–1958).
According to the Royal Canadian Mint, the official term for the coin is the one-cent piece, but in practice the terms penny and cent predominate. [citation needed] Penny was likely readily adopted because the previous coinage in Canada (up to 1858) was the British monetary system, where Canada used British pounds, shillings, and pence as coinage alongside U.S. decimal coins.
"Circulating Coins Production data".United States Mint. Archived from the original on March 14, 2016.; United States Mint. Archived 2017-01-31 at the Wayback Machine; Archived 2007-03-14 at the Wayback Machine dead links
The unique composition of the coin (low-grade steel coated with zinc, instead of the previously 95%-copper-based bronze composition) has led to various nicknames, such as wartime cent, steel war penny, zinc cent and steelie. The 1943 steel cent features the same Victor David Brenner design for the Lincoln cent which had been in use since 1909.
This leads to the possibility of smelters taking coins and melting them down for the scrap value of the metal. Pre-1992 British pennies were made of 97% copper; but as of 2008, based on the price of copper, the value of a penny from this period is 1.5 new-pence. Modern British pennies are now made of copper-plated steel.
The coin was originally minted in bronze (composition 97% copper, 2.5% zinc, 0.5% tin) between 1971 and September 1992. However, increasing world metal prices necessitated a change of composition. Since 1992, the coins are minted in steel and electroplated in copper, making them magnetic. [17]
Penny is first attested in a 1394 Scots text, [n 1] a variant of Old English peni, a development of numerous variations including pennig, penning, and pending. [n 2] The etymology of the term "penny" is uncertain, although cognates are common across almost all Germanic languages [n 3] and suggest a base *pan-, *pann-, or *pand-with the individualizing suffix -ing.